JUL  n?.  1924 


Division   -O  O  <-^  ^O 
Section     ,M372 


THE   LIFE  OF  JESUS 


THE 
LIFE    OF   JESUS 

IN    THE    LIGHT    OF    THE 
HIGHER    CRITICISM   /<^ 


V       BY 

ALFRED  W.  MARTIN,  A.M.,  S.T.B. 

ASSOCIATE   LEADER   OF   THE   SOCIETY   FOB 
ETHICAL   CULTURE,   NEW   YOBK  CITY 


NEW  YORK  AND  LONDON 
D.  APPLETON  AND   COMPANY 

1913 


Copyright,  1913,  by 
D.  APPLETON  AND  COMPANY 


Printed  in  the  United  States  of  America 


INTRODUCTION 

We  are  to  engage  in  a  series  of  seven  studies  in 
the  life  of  Jesus  from  the  point  of  vieM^  of  the 
higher  criticism.  At  the  very  outset  it  behooves 
me,  as  a  representative  of  the  Society  for  Ethical 
Culture,  to  remind  you  that  no  statements  of  mine 
are  to  be  construed  as  indicating  the  position  of  the 
Ethical  Movement  on  the  subjects  to  be  discussed. 
The  truth  is,  the  Ethical  Movement,  as  such,  has  no 
''position"  on  any  subjects  save  those  upon  which 
all  its  constituent  members  are  agreed.  And  these 
are  expressed  in  the  constitution  both  of  the 
"American  Ethical  Union"  and  of  the  "Interna- 
tional Union  of  Ethical  Societies."  These  official 
and  only  authoritative  sources  of  information  as  to 
what  the  Ethical  Movement  stands  for  clearly 
imply  a  respect  for  freedom  of  thought  which  for- 
bids any  representative  of  the  Movement  from  com- 
mitting it  to  his  personal  opinions  upon  any  open 
or  debated  question.  Consequently  whatever  views 
I  may  express  in  this  series  of  lectures  must  be  con- 
strued as  representing  no  one  but  myself.  Proba- 
bly the  concurrence  of  other  Ethical  leaders  in 

y 


vi  INTRODUCTION 

many  an  opinion  can  be  counted  upon,  but  in  no 
sense  whatever  are  either  they,  or  the  Societies 
they  lead,  sponsors  for  my  utterances.  With  this 
brief  admonitory  foreword  as  a  fitting  and  neces- 
sary introduction,  let  us  address  ourselves  to  the 
first  subject  of  the  series,  The  Higher  Criticism  of 
the  Bible. 


PREFATORY  NOTE 

In  the  following  pages  I  have  endeavored  to  re- 
produce, as  nearly  as  possible  in  their  original 
form,  eight  of  twelve  lectures  delivered,  without 
notes,  on  Sunday  evenings,  in  the  winter  of  1912 
at  the  Meeting-House  of  the  Society  for  Ethical 
Culture  of  New  York.  It  is  in  response  to  the  writ- 
ten request  of  several  hundred  persons  that  these 
lectures  are  now  published. 

Alfred  "W.  Martin. 

New  York, 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTEB  PAGE 

I.    The  Higher  Criticism     .        .        .        .  1 

II.     The  Birth  of  Jesus         ....  42 

III.  The  Temptation  op  Jesus       ...  72 

IV.  Miracles  and  the  Ministry  of  Healing  109 
V.     Prerequisites  for  Knowing  What  Jesus 

Taught 141 

YI.    The  Crucifixion 177 

VII.    The  Resurrection     .....  209 
VIII.    Jesus  and  Paul  as  Founders  of  Chris- 
tianity       250 


THE  LIFE  OF  JESUS 


THE   HIGHER   CRITICISM 

The  purpose  of  this  preliminary  lecture 
is  not  to  gratify  any  intellectual  curiosity 
or  to  stimulate  any  speculative  interest  which 
the  subject  may  have  engendered.  On  the 
contrary,  it  is  because  the  subject  has  a 
practical  importance  and  stands  ethically  re- 
lated to  one  of  the  great  literary  sources  of 
inspiration  for  the  conduct  of  life  that  I  feel 
warranted  in  devoting  an  hour  to  its  con- 
sideration. 

Through  acquaintance  with  the  aims, 
methods  and  results  of  the  higher  criticism 
there  is  certain  to  be  generated  a  new  in- 
terest in  the  Bible,  a  better  understanding 
and  a  more  intelligent  appreciation  of  its 
contents.  Indeed,  we  may  reasonably  ex- 
pect a  reproduction,  to  some  extent,  of  that 
1 


THE    LIFE    OF    JESUS 

renaissance  of  interest  in  the  Bible  which 
occurred  in  Shakspere's  day,  when  people 
walked  miles  to  hear  selections  from  the  Bi- 
ble read  by  a  dim  candle-light;  when  churches 
were  crowded,  not  to  hear  a  popular 
preacher,  but  to  listen  to  readings  from  the 
Bible ;  when,  after  a  millennium  of  ecclesias- 
tical bondage,  in  the  dawn  of  the  revival  of 
learning,  people  in  every  walk  of  life  sought 
to  satisfy  their  craving  for  knowledge  of  this 
book. 

Why  should  we  wish  for  a  similar  renais- 
sance of  interest  in  the  Bible  ?  First,  because 
the  Bible  as  an  influence  stands  unsurpassed, 
nay,  unrivalled,  among  the  sacred  scriptures 
of  the  world's  religions.  It  has  influenced 
our  language;  for,  during  the  seventeenth 
century,  the  formative  period  of  the  Eng- 
lish tongue,  the  Bible  was,  par  excellence, 
the  household  book.  Scores  of  suggestive 
phrases,  such  as  ''making  bricks  without 
straw,"  ''selling  one's  birthright,"  "enter- 
taining angels  unawares,"  "weighed  in  the 
balance  and  found  wanting,"  passed  directly 
from  the  Bible  into  popular  speech.  The 
Bible  has  influenced  our  literature,  and  not 
2 


THE    HIGHER    CRITICISM 

least  in  setting  the  standard  of  style.  The 
ultimate  standard  of  English  prose  is  uni- 
versally conceded  to  be  the  Bible.  Its  direct- 
ness of  statement,  simplicity  of  words,  power 
to  convince,  dignity,  earnestness  and  rhythm, 
all  these  constitute  qualities  that  mark  every 
classical  specimen  of  English  literature.  The 
Bible  has  influenced  art  and  to  a  far  greater 
degree  than  is  commonly  supposed.  More 
than  two-thirds  of  the  paintings  in  the  gal- 
leries and  churches  of  Europe  interpret  Bib- 
lical subjects,  including  the  three  supreme  re- 
ligious pictures  in  the  world — Raphael's 
Sistine  Madonna,  Da  Vinci's  Last  Supper, 
Angelo's  drama  on  the  ceiling  of  the  Sistine 
Chapel.  Add  to  these  influences  exerted  by 
the  Bible  the  effect  it  has  had,  and  ever  will 
have,  on  the  moral  education  of  children,  pro- 
viding, as  it  does,  the  best  extant  material 
for  the  development  of  character  in  the 
young. 

A  second  reason  for  wishing  to  see  a  re- 
naissance of  interest  in  the  Bible  relates  to 
what  is  known  as  the  ''higher  criticism." 
This  has  given  the  Bible  back  to  us,  as  it 
were,  by  making  it  more  readable,  more  in- 
3 


THE    LIFE    OF    JESUS 

telligible,  more  interesting;  creating  in  us 
the  same  spontaneous  delight  we  feel  when 
reading  the  Odyssey  or  Faust. 

Criticism  may  be  defined  as  judgment 
based  on  close  observation  and  systemized 
knowledge.  And  since  man's  judgments  have 
improved  with  his  power  and  opportunity 
to  observe  closely  and  give  order  and  pre- 
cision to  what  he  knows,  criticism  has  had 
a  progressive  history.  In  other  words,  man 
has  always  been  a  critic,  and  the  sole  differ- 
ence here  between  the  savage  and  the  savant 
is  one  of  degree,  not  of  kind.  Moreover,  the 
present  era,  far  from  being  the  age  of  criti- 
cism, is  only  the  latest  stage  in  a  process  as 
old  as  man  and  destined  to  continue  as  long 
as  there  are  thinking  men  and  women  on  the 
earth. 

Applied  to  ancient  books  criticism  means 
determining  their  date,  genuineness  and  au- 
thenticity— genuineness  indicating  that  the 
given  work  was  written  by  the  author  whose 
name  it  bears,  while  authenticity  relates  to 
the  accuracy  and  fulness  with  which  the  facts 
have  been  presented.  And  these  issues  are 
determined  by  both  external  and  internal 
4 


THE    HIGHER    CRITICISM 

evidence.  When  considering  the  former  we 
ask  such  questions  as  these:  How  far  back 
can  reference  to  the  book  be  traced?  Where 
is  mention  first  made  of  it?  Who  refers  to 
it  ?  What  is  the  value  of  his  testimony? 
Turning  to  internal  evidence,  we  ask:  Does 
the  book  contain  any  record  of  its  own  com- 
position? Is  it  possible  to  trace  the  materi- 
als the  author  had  at  hand  and  to  fix  the 
mode  in  which  they  were  combined?  Arc 
there  any  hints  within  the  work  as  to  its  date 
or  the  age  in  which  it  was  produced?  For 
many  books  came  into  existence  under  con- 
ditions in  which  no  account  was  taken  of  their 
birth  and  growth.  Indian  hymns,  Greek 
myths,  Teutonic  legends,  Scandinavian  sagas, 
the  Pentateuch,  the  Gospels — these  are  ex- 
amples of  literature  the  formation  of  which 
is  comparable  to  certain  strata  of  the  earth's 
crust — the  result  of  successive  accretions  of 
sedimentary  deposit  during  centuries.  So 
these  books,  and  countless  others,  are  the  re- 
sult of  successive  literary  accretions  at  a 
time  when  no  record  was  made  of  the  mode 
of  their  formation.  Hence,  the  task  of  criti- 
cism is  in  no  small  measure  the  removal  of 
5 


THE    LIFE    OF    JESUS 

the  mystery  that  enshrouds  the  genesis  and 
development  of  this  literature  by  tracing  the 
manner  in  which  it  assumed  its  present  form. 
The  illustrations  just  cited  include  Biblical 
books,  thereby  indicating  that  Biblical  criti- 
cism is  only  part  of  a  larger  literary  move- 
ment looking  to  the  elucidation  of  what  is 
obscure  regarding  the  origin  and  growth  of 
ancient  books.  This  wider  critical  activity, 
including  the  Bible  in  its  scope,  can  be  traced 
as  far  back  as  the  third  century  before  our 
era,  when,  in  Alexandria,  certain  Greek  cities 
disputed  the  authorship  of  the  Iliad,  doubt- 
ing its  Homeric  origin  and  holding  that  if 
it  should  prove  to  be  in  truth  Homer's  work, 
then  he  could  not  have  been  also  the  author 
of  the  Odyssey.  But  this  promising  start  in 
literary  criticism  was  soon  brought  to  a 
standstill  by  the  dissolution  of  the  Graeco- 
Roman  civilization,  the  first  in  a  series  of 
causes  that  kept  the  revival  of  Greek  culture 
and  criticism  in  abeyance  for  over  a  thou- 
sand years.  At  the  beginning  of  our  era 
the  whole  Graeco-Roman  world  was  over- 
spread with  hopelessness  and  despair. 
Everything  whispered  of  decay  and  death. 
6 


THE    HIGHER    CRITICISM 

In  the  upper  classes  of  society  wealth  and 
debauchery  were  coupled,  in  the  lower  classes 
poverty  and  oppression.  Anyone  could  see 
that  a  politico-social  catastrophe  was  immi- 
nent. No  one  felt  moved  to  engage  in  any 
form  of  positive  action.  All  literary  activity, 
whether  creative  or  critical,  steadily  de- 
clined. In  the  masterpiece  of  Marcus  Aure- 
lius,  who  sought  to  hold  up  the  falling  em- 
pire by  the  power  of  personal  example,  we 
see  how  inevitable  was  the  disaster  which 
not  even  a  noble  Stoicism  could  avert.  Then 
over  this  decaying  civilization  there  spread 
Christianity  with  its  gospel  of  a  kingdom 
beyond  the  skies  and  the  consequent  absorp- 
tion of  interest  in  *'other-worldiness"  as 
against  the  Greek's  devotion  to  the  affairs 
of  this  world.  Thus,  with  the  rise  of  mediae- 
val Christianity,  there  came  not  only  indif- 
ference to  criticism,  but  absolute  prohibition 
of  it,  on  pain  of  excommunication  from  ' '  the 
sole  channel  of  Divine  Grace."  To  postpone 
the  resumption  of  critical  investigation 
longer  still,  there  occurred  the  invasion  of 
Central  Europe  by  the  barbarian  conquerors 
from  the  north.  Obviously  these  invading 
2  7 


THE    LIFE    OF    JESUS 

hordes  were  in  no  condition  to  receive  liter- 
ary culture.  Centuries  would  have  to  elapse 
before  intellectual  habits  could  be  formed 
and  the  people  be  fitted  for  literary  training 
and  critical  inquiry.  Small  wonder,  then, 
that  not  until  the  fifteenth  century  was  there 
a  renaissance  of  that  interest  in  criticism 
manifested  by  the  ancient  Greeks.  Nor,  in- 
deed, was  it  until  the  middle  of  the  eight- 
eenth century  that  literary  criticism  of  the 
modern  scientific  type  began.  Within  the 
past  century  a  vast  deal  of  critical  work  has 
been  done  on  the  great  epic  poems  of  the 
Hindus,  Parsees,  Greeks  and  Germans,  on 
the  Bibles  of  the  great  religions,  notably  the 
Koran  and  the  Pitakas  in  the  non-Christian 
group,  enabling  us  to  trace  the  development 
of  Islamic  and  Buddhistic  thought  in  a  man- 
ner and  to  a  degree  quite  unprecedented.  Al- 
ready a  whole  library  of  criticism  on  the 
Shaksperian  drama  has  been  produced, 
while  one  on  the  works  of  Dante  and  of 
Goethe  is  well  under  way. 

Coming  now  to  the  Old  and  New  Testa- 
ments, criticism  of  these  has  had  a  history 
of  its  own.    Its  beginnings  appear  in  the  ver- 
8 


THE    HIGHER    CRITICISM 

diet  of  certain  Jewish  scliolars  of  the  first 
century  regarding  the  admission  of  the  inter- 
Biblical  Apocalypse,  ''Enoch,"  into  the  Old 
Testament  canon.  They  declared  against  its 
inclusion,  perhaps  on  the  ground  of  its  pseu- 
donymity,  or  because  of  the  extravagances 
that  mark  its  angelology  and  demonology. 
Among  the  early  Christian  Fathers  we  find 
Origen,  Jerome,  Irenseus,  conspicuous  for 
their  discussion  of  problems  in  Biblical  criti- 
cism. In  the  Middle  Ages  the  name  of  Rabbi 
Ben  Ezra  towers  above  all  others.  He  may, 
with  considerable  propriety,  be  called  the 
father  of  Pentateuchal  criticism,  for  his  com- 
mentary on  the  first  five  books  of  the  Old 
Testament,  published  at  Toledo  toward  the 
close  of  the  eleventh  century,  is  the  lineal 
ancestor  of  the  most  recent  works  on  this 
subject.  Browning,  who  was  educated  to 
know  "the  holes  and  corners  of  history," 
discovered  the  Spanish  commentator  and, 
seeing  in  him  a  pioneer,  the  blazer  of  a  new 
trail,  an  original  philosopher  and  critic, 
lifted  him  out  of  obscurity  and  immortalized 
him  in  the  poem  that  bears  his  name. 
In  the  Renaissance  two  other  Jews,  Spin- 
9 


THE    LIFE    OF    JESUS 

oza  and  Astmc,  carried  on  the  work  Ben 
Ezra  had  so  auspiciously  begun.  And  just 
before  them  appeared  Erasmus  and  Luther ; 
the  former  debating  with  rare  skill  the  au- 
thorship of  the  Epistle  to  the  Hebrews;  the 
latter,  with  characteristic  bluntness  and 
frankness,  disputing  the  merit  of  various 
Biblical  books,  especially  the  Epistle  of 
James,  which  he  styled  ''an  epistle  of  straw" 
because  it  did  not  teach  his  favorite  doctrine 
of  "justification  by  faith. ' '  Mention  must  be 
made  also  of  Luther  *s  celebrated  antagonist, 
Carlstadt,  who  took  radical  ground  touching 
the  Johannine  authorship  of  the  New  Testa- 
ment Apocalypse,  daring  to  doubt  that  it  was 
the  work  of  John,  the  disciple  of  Jesus,  a 
position  sustained  by  the  great  majority  of 
modern  scholars. 

Hitherto  all  Biblical  criticism  had  been 
based  on  certain  assumptions.  No  one  as 
yet,  not  even  the  great  Erasmus,  had  ap- 
proached the  Bible  books  after  the  manner 
of  those  Greeks  who  first  questioned  the  gen- 
uineness of  the  Iliad.  Preconceptions,  pre- 
dilections, hypotheses — these  governed  the 
conclusions  of  each  critic  in  turn  to  a  greater 
.  10 


THE    HIGHER    CRITICISM 

or  lesser  degree.  In  none  was  there  utter 
freedom  of  thought  or  thorough-going  scien- 
tific method.  It  was  assumed,  for  example, 
that  the  books  were  divinely  inspired  and 
written  in  the  order  in  which  we  now  have 
them.  It  was  believed  that  the  records  of 
events  represented  the  testimony  of  eye-wit- 
nesses and  that  all  the  miracles  of  both  Tes- 
taments were  actual  occurrences.  It  was 
further  maintained  that  Jesus  was  intellectu- 
ally infallible  and  morally  perfect,  and  that 
Christianity  must  stand  in  a  class  by  itself 
as  the  one  only  true,  divine,  and  absolute 
religion.  But  about  the  year  1770  Lessing 
and  his  younger  contemporary  Herder  came 
forward  with  the  proposition  that  the  Bible 
should  be  read  and  judged  as  any  other  book, 
because  it  shows  evidences  of  being  a  human 
production.  Moreover,  these  critics  declared 
that  no  real  harm  can  follow  from  such  pro- 
cedure, because  whatever  is  true  in  the  Bible 
now,  will  remain  so  when  criticism  has  com- 
pleted its  work.  In  the  course  of  the  follow- 
ing decade  this  startling  proposal  was 
systematically  adopted  by  Eichhorn,  who  in 
1782  launched  upon  an  eager,  expectant 
11 


THE    LIFE    OF    JESUS 

world  the  "higher  criticism,"  as  he  himself 
styled  it  in  the  preface  to  his  ''Einleitung  in 
das  alte  Testament."  To  him  this  criticism 
of  the  Bible  was  "higher"  than  that  of  his 
predecessors  because  conducted  above  the 
plane  of  unwarranted  presuppositions  and 
preconceptions.  But  besides  this  interpre- 
tation of  the  word  "higher"  as  given  by 
Eichhorn,  two  other  meanings  have  been  at- 
tached to  it.  It  was  used  to  designate  criti- 
cism that  is  positive  and  constructive  in  pur- 
pose and  in  results  as  contrasted  with  that 
of  the  French  Encyclopaedists  of  the  eight- 
eenth century — Diderot,  D'Alembert,  Vol- 
taire— "lower"  because  at  once  sceptical  in 
tone  and  iconoclastic  in  teaching.  Similarly 
to  the  critical  work  of  Thomas  Paine  and 
Robert  Ingersoll,  marked  as  it  is  by  the  same 
characteristics  and  glaringly  deficient  in 
scholarship,  the  term  "lower"  was  applied. 
In  the  popular  brochure  by  Colonel  Ingersoll, 
"The  Mistakes  of  Moses,"  we  have  a 
critique  which,  in  the  light  of  the  assured 
results  of  the  higher  criticism,  were  better 
entitled,  "The  Mistakes  of  Robert  Inger- 
soll. ' '  For  no  scholar  to-day  would  think  of 
12 


THE    HIGHER    CRITICISM 

attributing  to  Moses  any  of  the  ''mistakes" 
with  which  the  humorous  but  unscholarly 
monograph  charges  the  great  Hebrew  liber- 
ator and  legislator.  In  making  this  criticism 
I  would  not  be  unmindful  of  the  great  service 
Ingersoll  rendered  to  religion.  Remember- 
ing the  particular  period  in  which  his  work 
was  done — those  decades  of  fierce  contro- 
versy over  issues  now  dead  beyond  all  pos- 
sibility of  resuscitation — we  must  gratefully 
acknowledge  that  no  other  man  of  his  time 
did  so  much  to  help  the  faith  of  the  past  on 
to  the  faith  of  the  future.  Nor  is  it  extrava- 
gant to  maintain  that  much  of  the  liberalism 
conspicuous  in  orthodox  circles  to-day  must 
be  attributed,  in  large  measure,  to  Inger- 
soll's  expose  of  antiquated  beliefs.  On  the 
other  hand,  it  is  equally  pertinent  to  observe 
that,  had  his  scholarship  matched  his  wit,  the 
Biblical  criticism  in  which  he  indulged  would 
have  escaped  classification  with  that  of  his 
spiritual  ancestors  in  France.  For  the  criti- 
cism which  lacks  historical  perspective, 
which  accepts  myths  and  legends  as  literal 
facts,  which  assumes  that  the  Pentateuch 
was  the  work  of  Moses  because  his  name  ap- 
13 


THE    LIFE    OF    JESUS 

pears  on  the  first  page,  which  asks  no  ques- 
tion as  to  the  origin,  date,  genuineness,  au- 
thenticity and  tendenz  of  the  books  to  be 
criticized — such  criticism  is  properly  desig- 
nated ''lower"  as  compared  to  that  which 
rises  to  the  plane  where  full  cognizance  is 
taken  of  these  fundamental  prerequisites  for 
judging  Bible  books. 

A  third  meaning  given  to  the  term  ' '  higher 
criticism"  contrasts  it  with  textual  criticism. 
The  function  of  the  latter  is  to  determine 
whether  or  not  the  Hebrew  text  of  the  Old 
Testament  and  the  Greek  text  of  the  New 
Testament  actually  represent  the  original 
writing  of  the  authors.  But  behind  this  text- 
problem  is  that  of  the  sources  and  methods 
employed  by  authors  and  editors  in  making 
the  text.  Here  is  a  problem  higher  up  the 
stream  of  investigation  and  hence  the  use  of 
the  term  ''higher  criticism"  to  denote  this 
particular  branch  of  inquiry. 

Following  Eichhorn's  lead  there  appeared 
scholar  after  scholar,  each  contributing  his 
quota  to  the  solution  to  one  or  another  of  the 
problems  which  the  higher  criticism  had  be- 
fore it.  To  recall  these  contributors  and 
14 


THE    HIGHER    CRITICISM 

their  respective  legacies  to  our  present  herit- 
age of  Biblical  knowledge  would  carry  us 
too  far  afield.  Let  it  suffice  to  take  but  a 
passing  glance  at  some  of  those  stars  of  the 
first  magnitude  that  shine  in  the  firmament 
of  New  Testament  criticism.  Before  all 
others  David  Friederich  Strauss  must  be 
named,  for  with  the  appearance  of  his  **Life 
of  Jesus"  in  1835,  began  the  era  of  scientific 
investigation  of  the  Biblical  basis  of  Chris- 
tianity. That  book  created  a  veritable  panic 
in  the  theological  world,  because  it  seemed  to 
destroy  the  Christian  religion  at  its  very 
source.  A  mass  of  polemical  literature  was 
published  within  the  decade  following  the  ap- 
pearance of  Strauss'  work  and  critical  in- 
quiry entered  on  new,  unexplored  fields  in 
which  it  is  still  at  work.  In  the  preface  of 
this  epoch-making  book  Strauss  laid  down 
the  dictum  that  prior  to  all  other  questions 
concerning  Jesus  is  this:  '^How  far  do  we 
stand  in  the  Gospels  on  historical  ground?" 
Dissatisfied  with  earlier,  partial  applications 
of  the  ''mythical"  theory,  which  interpreted 
the  beginning  and  the  close  of  Jesus'  life  in 
theories  of  myth,  Strauss  proceeded  to  apply 
15 


THE    LIFE    OF    JESUS 

tlie  theory  to  the  intervening  narratives  of 
the  Gospel  story,  showing  how  most  of  the 
historical  narratives  have  been  mythically 
embellished,  yet  holding  at  the  same  time 
that  ''the  theory  of  the  Christian  faith  is 
quite  independent  of  all  these  critical  inves- 
tigations." But  despite  this  comforting 
assurance  conveyed  in  the  preface,  it  was 
generally  felt  that  the  book  itself  annulled  it, 
and  a  succession  of  fierce  and  protracted  on- 
slaughts were  made  upon  the  author's  posi- 
tion. It  remained  for  his  famous  teacher, 
Ferdinand  Christian  Baur,  to  give  the  world 
a  calm  and  just  estimate  of  his  pupil's  book. 
In  the  course  of  his  review  Baur  pointed  to 
a  still  more  fundamental  inquiry  than  even 
that  which  Strauss  thought  basic,  namely, 
examination  of  the  documents  which  are  the 
sources  of  gospel  history.  To  that  task  the 
illustrious  founder  of  the  Tiibingen  School 
applied  himself  with  consecrated  zeal,  bring- 
ing to  the  gigantic  task  a  wealth  of  erudition, 
a  breadth  and  depth  of  philosophic  insight 
and  a  delicacy  of  religious  feeling  literally 
unrivaled  in  the  annals  of  Biblical  criticism. 
It  is  to  Baur  more  than  to  any  other  scholar 
16 


THE    HIGHER    CRITICISM 

that  we  owe  those  sound  critical  methods 
which  are  part  of  the  indispensable  outfit  of 
all  investigators  on  Biblical  subjects.  And 
w^hile  the  teachings  of  the  school  he  founded 
have  been  in  large  measure  rejected  by  re- 
cent scholarship,  the  methods  for  which  it 
stood  have  won  for  it  the  deserved  praise  of 
being  "a  fruitful  failure." 

By  far  the  most  important  French  scholar 
in  the  nineteenth  century  was  Ernst  Renan. 
In  1863  he  published  his  ''Vie  de  Jesus/'  a 
work  which,  by  its  charm  of  style  and  the 
daring  originality  of  its  thought,  sent  a  thrill 
throughout  all  Europe.  The  book  had  the 
exceptional  merit  of  making  Jesus  attractive 
to  thousands  who  had  cared  nothing  for  him 
before.  Defective  in  critical  grasp,  but  pos- 
sessing fine  imaginative  jDower  and  rare  liter- 
ary skill,  the  book  was  neither  history  nor 
poetry,  but  savored  of  both.  By  permitting 
his  imagination  to  work  uncontrolled  by 
scrupulous  regard  for  evidence,  Renan  pro- 
duced a  psychological  piece  of  biographical 
architecture  as  fascinating  in  form  as  it  is 
deficient  in  fidelity  to  facts. 

Conspicuous  in  the  field  of  English  scholar- 
17 


THE    LIFE    OF    JESUS 

ship  stood  J.  R.  Seeley.  His  ''Ecce  Homo,'* 
which  appeared  anonymously  in  1866,  re- 
quired of  the  reader  no  knowledge  of  Ger- 
man or  French  criticism,  but  simply  first 
hand  acquaintance  with  the  Gospels.  Treat- 
ing the  subject  in  entire  independence  of  all 
ecclesiastical  standards  and  traditions,  the 
author  retold  the  Gospel  story  with  a  fresh- 
ness, vigor  and  delight  that  justly  gave  his 
book  a  place  in  the  front  rank  of  writings 
on  the  person  and  teaching  of  Jesus. 

To  the  late  lamented  Otto  Pfleiderer,  per- 
haps the  most  beloved  of  all  the  followers  of 
Baur,  every  intelligent  reader  of  the  New 
Testament  owes  a  debt  of  deepest  gratitude. 
At  once  philosopher  and  historian,  he  was 
eminently  qualified  to  gather  up  and  set 
forth  in  illuminating  fashion  all  the  assured 
results  of  the  higher  criticism  and  to  con- 
tribute, as  no  other  scholar  of  our  time,  to 
an  elucidation  of  the  vexed  problems  relat- 
ing to  the  Apostolic  age  and  the  beginnings 
of  the  Christian  Church. 

Foremost  among  living  New  Testament 
critics  is  Adolf  Harnack,  recently  trans- 
ferred from  his  chair  in  the  University  of 
18 


THE    HIGHER    CRITICISM 

Berlin  to  the  Royal  Library.  Like  Baur,  he 
is  a  prodigious  worker  in  the  field  of  Chris- 
tian origins  and  the  most  noteworthy  result 
of  his  long  and  consecrated  labors  is  an  ex- 
position of  the  ultimate  source,  the  '^Quelle" 
or  "Q"  document,  as  it  is  called,  the  product 
of  ** fresh  study  of  the  first  three  Gospels," 
a  source  to  which  we  must  turn  as  our  pres- 
ent ultimate  medium  of  information  concern- 
ing the  '' sayings"  of  Jesus. 

Of  Loisy  in  France,  of  Estlin  Carpenter  in 
England,  of  Wrede,  Wernle,  Schmiedel, 
Holtzmann,  and  Weiszacker  in  Germany, 
scholars  who  have  perpetuated  all  that  is 
best  in  the  methods  of  the  illustrious  Baur; 
of  Oort,  Hooykaas,  and  Kuenen  in  Holland, 
to  whom  we  owe  the  immortal  '*  Bible  for 
Learners";  of  Scott  in  Canada;  of  Toy  and 
Bacon  and  Schmidt  in  our  own  country — of 
these  and  many  other  enrichers  of  critical 
literature  would  I  speak,  did  not  the  time- 
limit  forbid. 

Concerning  the  aim  of  the  higher  criticism, 

it  should  be  observed  that  it  is  fundamentally 

and  essentially  constructive.     This  fact  is 

not  generally  appreciated,  because  in  the  ful- 

19 


THE    LIFE    OF    JESUS 

fillment  of  its  aim  more  or  less  destruction 
is  inevitable,  as  indeed  is  the  case  in  all  con- 
structive work.  To  build  houses,  the  trees 
of  the  forest  must  be  destroyed  in  order  that 
the  necessary  lumber  may  be  supplied. 
Quarries  must  be  broken  up  to  furnish  the 
foundation-stones  and  iron  mines  annihilated 
to  provide  the  hardware.  If  it  be  said  that 
the  higher  criticism  is  destructive,  let  it  be 
understood  that  it  is  so  in  precisely  the  same 
sense  that  every  other  science  is  destructive. 
The  astronomy  of  Adams  and  Leverrier  de- 
stroyed part  of  the  astronomy  of  Copernicus, 
as  his  destroyed  part  of  Ptolemy's  and  his, 
in  turn,  undermined  astrology.  The  chem- 
istry of  Richards  and  Rutherford  destroyed, 
in  some  measure,  that  of  Davy  and  Faraday, 
as  they  destroyed  the  pseudo-science  of 
alchemy.  So  the  higher  criticism  of  Holtz- 
man  and  Weiszacker  destroyed  part  of  the 
criticism  of  Baur,  as  he,  in  turn,  destroyed 
the  unscientific  work  of  earlier  critics.  In 
other  words,  all  scientific  criticism  of  what- 
ever kind  is  relative ;  no  one  critic  ever  ar- 
rives at  a  final  completion  of  all  that  needs 
to  be  done,  but  each  destroys  errors  made  by 
20 


THE    HIGHER    CRITICISM 

predecessors  and  builds  a  more  satisfying 
structure  than  had  till  then  been  known. 
Thus  the  aim  is  always  constructive,  even 
when  to  the  surface  observer  it  appears  to 
be  the  reverse.  So  was  it,  for  example,  when 
Lachmann  devoted  a  large  part  of  his  life  to 
picking  the  Iliad  to  pieces,  when  De  Wette 
and  Wellhausen  gave  a  score  or  more  of 
years  to  dissecting  the  Pentateuch,  when 
Canon  Cheyne  spent  nearly  a  half-century 
splitting  the  book  of  Isaiah  into  its  original 
parts.  Yet  why  did  these  reverent  and  con- 
secrated critics  engage  in  this  seemingly  de- 
structive work?  The  answer  is,  because  they 
felt  their  first  duty  was  not  to  these  books, 
but  to  truth.  They  were  persuaded  that  such 
work  would  culminate  in  knowledge  of  the 
truth  concerning  the  composition  of  these 
books  and  thus  improve  our  understanding 
and  enhance  our  appreciation  of  them.  Dear 
as  are  their  contents  and  sacred  as  are  the 
names  associated  with  their  origin,  yet  dearer 
and  most  sacred  of  all  is  truth,  which  neither 
hallowed  association  nor  venerated  opinion 
can  be  permitted  to  suppress.  ''Ye  shall 
know  the  truth  and  the  truth  shall  make  you 
21 


THE    LIFE    OF    JESUS 

free" — free  from  all  spiritual  distress,  free 
from  the  heartache  which  follows  the  sus- 
picion that  what  one  believes  is  false  or  open 
to  doubt. 

^  Confining  our  attention  to  the  New  Testa- 
ment, we  see  the  positive  and  constructive 
aim  of  the  higher  criticism  manifested  first 
in  its  endeavor  to  restore,  as  fully  and  as  ac- 
curately as  possible,  not  only  the  original 
Greek  text  of  our  Gospels,  but  also  the  docu- 
ments on  which  they  were  based.  In  the  ef- 
fort to  go  beyond  the  Greek  translation  to 
the  original  Aramaic  which  Jesus  spoke,  be- 
yond his  words  to  the  precise  thoughts  he 
sought  to  convey,  and  again,  beyond  both 
his  thoughts  and  their  medium  of  expression 
to  the  age  in  which  he  lived,  the  political, 
social,  theological  and  moral  environment  in 
which  he  was  brought  up — here  also  the  dom- 
inant aim  is  in  evidence.  Another  of  the 
constructive  purposes  of  the  higher  criticism 
is  to  come  into  possession  of  the  historical 
facts  concerning  the  person  and  daily  life  of 
Jesus,  a  task  fraught  with  tremendous  diffi- 
culties of  which  the  student  gets  but  a  fore- 
taste when  he  learns  how  the  available  rec- 
22 


THE    HIGHER    CRITICISM 

ords  came  into  being,  and  discovers  that  the 
first  three  Gospels,  despite  their  many  points 
of  resemblance,  yet  differ  in  important  par- 
ticulars, while  the  fourth  is  altogether  sui 
generis,  and  not  to  be  consulted  for  purely 
l)iographical  information,  a  distinction  to  be 
dwelt  upon  at  greater  length  in  a  later  lec- 
ture. The  constructive  purpose  of  the  higher 
criticism  is  seen  once  more  in  its  devotion 
to  the  task  of  re-arranging  the  New  Testa- 
ment books  in  their  chronological  order  so 
that  the  reader  may  trace  with  ease  the  vari- 
ous phases  of  development  in  the  life  and 
thought  of  the  first  century  and  a  half  of 
our  era.  Nay,  more,  the  higher  criticism  con- 
nects this  literature  with  that  of  the  two 
preceding  centuries,  singularly  prolific  as 
they  were  in  literary  creations.  Thus  the 
reader  is  enabled  to  trace  the  birth  and 
growth  of  those  parties,  institutions,  doc- 
trines and  morals  which  one  meets  with  first 
in  the  New  Testament.  Even  the  so-called 
''Apocrypha"  of  the  New  Testament  are 
made  to  do  service  in  promoting  the  con- 
structive purpose  in  view,  as  are  also  the 
sacred  books  that  record  the  life  of  the  Bud- 
3  23 


THE    LIFE    OF    JESUS 

dha  and  of  Zoroaster  and  other  great  re- 
ligious leaders  of  whom  wonder-stories  have 
been  told.  Still  another  aim  of  the  higher 
criticism  that  must  be  mentioned  is  its  en- 
deavor to  decide  when,  where,  by  whom,  and 
how,  these  canonical  books  were  written. 
Are  they  pure  biographies  in  the  sense  that 
they  recount  the  life  of  Jesus  regardless  of 
any  preconceived  idea  of  his  person  and  his 
mission,  or  do  they  reveal  signs  of  tendenz, 
of  partisanship  in  their  sympathies  with  one 
or  another  of  the  two  dominant  parties  of 
the  early  church?  To  what  extent  are  the 
narratives  real  records  of  real  events  ?  How 
account  for  the  differences  among  them  in 
their  descriptions  of  persons,  sayings  and 
events!  Which  comes  closest  to  the  original? 
In  the  light  of  such  constructive  aims  as 
these  there  ought  to  be  no  question  as  to  the 
serious  and  reverent  spirit  in  which  the  work 
is  being  undertaken.  It  requires  a  conse- 
crated mind  to  reject  consecrated  opinions, 
and  in  so  far  as  the  higher  criticism,  build- 
ing conclusions  on  evidence  alone,  has  sub- 
stituted for  long-cherished  beliefs  about  the 
Bible  others  to  be  more  dearly  cherished 
24 


THE    HIGHER    CRITICISM 

than  the  old,  it  has  revealed  the  noble  spirit 
behind  its  scientific  method.  Its  representa- 
tives care  supremely  for  truth,  but  in  the 
pursuit  of  it  they  lose  not  sight  of  rever- 
ence, rather  letting  ''more  of  reverence  in 
them  dwell  as  knowledge  grows  from  more  to 
more,"  making  ''one  music  as  before,  but 
vaster." 

If,  now,  it  be  said  that  the  higher  criticism 
is  "dangerous,"  let  it  be  understood  that 
this  is  true  only  in  the  same  sense  that  Jesus' 
saying,  "The  Sabbath  was  made  for  man, 
not  man  for  the  Sabbath, ' '  is  dangerous.  For 
even  to  this  day  intelligent  and  respectable 
people  justify  questionable  Sunday  practices 
by  appeal  to  this  affirmation  of  Jesus.  Dan- 
gerous the  higher  criticism  is  precisely  as 
Dante 's  denial  of  the  dependence  of  the  State 
upon  the  Church  for  its  authority  was  dan- 
gerous, because  the  ecclesiastical  hierarchy 
construed  it  as  the  prelude  to  anarchy  and 
irreligion,  little  dreaming  that  the  illustrious 
successors  of  Dante,  Mazzini  and  Cavour, 
five  centuries  after  his  death,  would  appeal 
to  his  "De  Monarchia"  when  justifying  their 
demand  for  a  free  Church  in  a  free  State. 
25 


THE    LIFE    OF    JESUS 

Dangerous  the"  higher  criticism  is  in  the 
same  sense  that  Darwin's  discovery  of  the 
chief  factor  in  the  origination  of  species  was 
dangerous,  because  it  was  tantamount  to 
''materialism"  and  "atheism"  in  the  eyes 
of  the  undiscerning  masses  who  saw  in  his 
partial  explanation  of  evolution  not  a  mere 
secondary  cause,  but  a  veritable  substitute 
for  God !  Dangerous,  again,  it  is  in  the  same 
way  that  the  uninitiated  conceived  Felix 
Adler's  break  with  Judaism  to  be,  because  in 
their  estimate  his  "free"  religion  was  cer- 
tain to  breed  moral  anarchy  and  gross  im- 
piety. But  each  of  these  pioneers  was  on 
the  truth-seeking  path  from  which  deviation 
was  impossible  save  by  searing  the  con- 
science and  tarnishing  the  soul.  For  them 
the  promised  land  of  the  ideal  lay  on  the 
other  side  of  the  Jordan  of  doubt;  their  only 
safety  was  in  pressing  on  to  the  further  shore. 

So,  too,  the  devotees  of  the  higher  criti- 
cism, obeying  the  same  divine  impulse,  suf- 
fered no  fear  of  consequences  to  check  their 
loyal  pursuit  of  truth,  and  the  results  have 
justified  their  consecrated  faith.  Far  from 
having  proved  detrimental  to  the  interests 
26 


THE    HIGHER    CRITICISM 

of  morality  and  religion,  the  assured  results 
of  the  higher  criticism  bear  witness  to  the 
reverse.  Even  its  negative  results  have  con- 
tributed to  the  advancement  of  ethical  and 
religious  thought.  Surely  it  is  a  spiritual 
gain  to  have  our  conception  of  God  relieved 
of  the  severe  strain  put  upon  it  by  narra- 
tives accepted  as  authentic  till  the  higher 
criticism  explained  their  origin  and  growth 
— God  commanding  Abraham  to  slay  his 
son  Isaac,  God  ordering  Samuel  to  ''hew 
Agag  in  pieces"  and  bidding  Moses  ''des- 
poil the  Egyptians"  of  their  jewelry — in- 
junctions now  known  to  be  part  of  the  le- 
gendary lore  of  a  semi-civilized  people  not 
yet  emerged  from  fetichism  and  the  crudest 
anthropomorphic  theism.  What  a  relief  to 
learn  that  the  first  chapter  of  Genesis  is  a 
religious  poem  not  a  scientific  treatise,  the 
product  of  an  exilian  Hebrew  genius  who 
revamped  the  cosmology  of  his  Babylonian 
contemporaries!  What  an  advantage  to 
know  that  the  narratives  of  Eden  and  the 
flood  represent  primitive  attempts  at  solv- 
ing the  problems  of  sin  and  retribution ;  that 
the  story  of  Jonah  is  not  history,  but  ro- 
27 


THE    LIFE    OF    JESUS 

mance,  designed  to  teach  ethical  truths  of 
paramount  importance  for  us  no  less  than 
for  the  Jews  of  Ftolemy's  time!  What  a 
help  it  is  to  know  that  we  need  not  apolo- 
gize for  the  character  of  the  deity  described 
in  the  eighth  chapter  of  Jeremiah,  nor  de- 
fend the  imprecations  recorded  in  the  sixty- 
ninth  psalm!  What  a  weight  of  moral 
difficulty  is  lifted  through  knowing  that 
Jesus  did  not  curse  an  innocent  fig  tree  nor 
obsess  the  swine  of  an  unsuspecting  farmer 
and  involve  him  in  unwarranted  loss  by  their 
mad  rush  into  the  sea!  What  a  blessing  to 
have  the  virgin-birth  story  lost  as  historical 
fact  and  found  as  an  exquisite  prose-poem, 
the  spontaneous  outburst  of  an  adoring  and 
revering  soul  bespeaking  the  sentiment  of 
his  age  and  place,  so  profoundly  impressed 
by  the  spiritual  greatness  of  Jesus  as  to 
feel  he  must  have  been  born  in  some  super- 
natural way!  What  a  gain,  too,  it  is  to  be 
able  to  substitute  for  the  belief  in  a  physical 
resurrection  of  Jesus  (which  all  the  Gospels 
do  not  teach,  neither  does  the  Apostle  Paul) 
the  fact  that  Jesus  so  lived  as  to  have  made 
his  disciples  certain  of  his  immortality  and 
28 


THE    HIGHER    CRITICISM 

of  their  own,  so  that  from  this  sense  of  cer- 
tainty a  legend  symbolical  of  it  arose.  Such 
helpful  conclusions  are  we  entitled  to  form 
from  even  the  negative  results  of  the  higher 
criticism,  removing  obstacles  to  rational 
faith  and  just  judgment  by  showing  us  the 
real  origin  and  character  of  the  narratives 
in  which  the  disturbing  statements  appear. 
In  this  connection  a  particular  moral  ad- 
vantage resulting  from  the  higher  criticism 
must  be  noted.  Incalculable  harm  has  come 
from  the  process  of  "allegorizing"  or 
'^ spiritualizing"  defenseless  Bible  passages 
to  make  them  harmonize  with  modern,  intel- 
lectual and  ethical  standards.  Fifty  years 
ago  this  ''allegorical"  method  of  interpreta- 
tion was  much  in  favor  among  Unitarians 
and  Universalists.  Such  Bible  statements  as 
offend  the  liberal  mind  were  then  construed 
as  "parables,"  or  as  "dramatic  presenta- 
tions of  religious  truth."  The  attempt  was 
made  to  explain  away  whatever  was  repug- 
nant to  the  moral  sense  of  the  Christian  be- 
liever. To-day,  thanks  to  the  beneficent  work 
of  the  higher  criticism,  all  this  is  changed. 
We  credit  Bible  writers  with  knowing  what 


THE    LIFE    OF    JESUS 

tliey  wished  to  say  and  saying  it  in  explicit 
terms.  And  if  we  find  they  have  stated  an 
idea  or  belief  which  modern  thought  has  out- 
grown, we  make  no  effort  at  forcing  it  into 
harmony  with  our  present  views,  but 
classify  it  among  the  ''rudiments"  of  which 
Paul  spoke  and  with  which  he  dealt  so 
justly  and  considerately.  In  short,  we 
recognize  the  fact  that  symbolical  or  alle- 
gorical interpretation  of  literary  material 
is  justifiable  only  when  it  is  involved  in 
the  literary  form,  or  is  explicitly  indi- 
cated in  the  context,  or  when  the  author 
directly  states  that  it  is  to  be  employed. 
Such,  in  brief,  are  the  canons  of  sym- 
bolical interpretation,  and  in  the  narra- 
tive portions  of  the  Synoptic  Gospels  there 
is  no  hint  of  any  other  than  a  literal  inter- 
pretation. Theological  crudities,  social  and 
personal  immoralities,  historical  inaccura- 
cies, scientific  errors,  these  and  kindred  ' '  dif- 
ficulties" in  the  Bible  it  has  been  sought  to 
dispose  of  by  an  ''allegorizing"  process,  but 
there  is  no  legitimate  basis  on  which  to  es- 
tablish it.  Alas,  for  the  religion  which  en- 
joins such  procedure!  As  Professor  Toy 
30 


THE    HIGHER    CRITICISM 

in  his  little  brochure  on  Biblical  criticism 
says,  "He  who  undertakes  to  defend  as  in- 
spired the  vindictive  feeling  of  certain  of 
the  Psalms  (as  Ixix,  cix,  cxxxvii)  is  trying 
to  ascribe  to  God  what  he  would  not  com- 
mend to  the  community,  because  he  knows 
that  the  moral  sense  of  our  time  would  re- 
ject it.  It  does  not  help  the  matter  to  say 
that  these  imprecations  are  directed  against 
the  enemies  of  Israel  as  the  enemies  of  di- 
vine truth,  and  are,  therefore,  nothing  but 
prayers  in  the  interests  of  humanity  that 
truth  may  prevail.  If  this  were  a  correct 
explanation  (which  it  is  not)  it  would  still 
not  justify  these  Psalms.  Their  spirit  is 
contrary  to  that  of  our  consciences,  as  any- 
one may  see,  if  he  will  only  undertake  to 
apply  these  imprecations  to  the  vilest 
wretches  and  greatest  enemies  of  religion  at 
the  present  day.  His  lips  would  refuse  to 
utter  the  words.  The  attempt  to  force  har- 
mony between  things  radically  opposed  is 
apt  to  warp  the  intellect  as  well  as  obscure 
the  moral  vision." 

Among  the  positive  achievements  of  the 
higher  criticism  a  supreme  place  must  be 
31 


THE    LIFE    OF    JESUS 

given  to  the  light  shed  upon  the  authorship 
and  date  of  the  constituent  books  of  the  Bi- 
ble. To  have  them  arranged  in  chrono- 
logical order  has  proved  an  incalculable 
boon,  particularly  as  so  many  of  the  books 
in  both  the  Old  and  the  New  Testament  are 
composite,  their  several  parts  separated,  in 
some  cases,  by  centuries.  What  a  privilege 
and  joy  to  be  able  to  see  the  denouement 
of  the  political,  social,  moral  and  religious 
life  of  Israel  in  the  centuries  from  the  period 
of  the  Judges  to  that  of  the  Maccabees;  or, 
to  trace,  within  the  shorter  period  covered 
by  the  New  Testament,  the  orderly  progress 
of  religious  thought,  church  government  and 
theological  doctrine;  to  note  and  understand 
Paul's  cosmopolitanism  as  contrasted  with 
the  provincialism  of  James,  to  appreciate  the 
various  conceptions  of  Jesus  that  were  cur- 
rent in  the  first  two  centuries,  illustrated 
by  the  three  chief  literary  monuments  of 
the  time — the  Synoptic  Gospels,  Paul's  let- 
ters, and  the  Fourth  Gospel — to  see  how  and 
why  the  ecclesiastical  polity  of  the  primitive 
Christian  Church  underwent  modification 
after  the  death  of  Paul,  losing  its  democratic 
32 


THE    HIGHER    CRITICISM 

cliaracter  and  moving  definitely  toward  an 
episcopacy!  All  this  has  been  brought 
within  the  easy  reach  of  readers  now  that 
the  disorderliness  of  Biblical  literature  has 
been  replaced  by  a  chronological  sequence. 
And  if  it  be  asked,  how  did  the  disorderli- 
ness originally  occur?  what  caused  the  liter- 
ary chaos  which  the  Bible,  as  it  is,  exhibits'? 
the  answer  is  briefly  as  follows:  Literary 
ownership  in  ancient  Palestine  and  Egypt 
did  not  have  the  significance  attaching  to  it 
in  our  time  and  place.  Editors  made  addi- 
tions to  manuscripts  as  they  saw  fit,  and 
without  the  least  consciousness  of  violating 
literary  rights.  Scribes  combined  various 
manuscripts  in  one  scroll,  either  for  scribal 
reasons  or  because  of  imagined  agreement 
of  contents,  witness,  for  example,  what  we 
see  in  the  books  of  Isaiah,  Zechariah,  Pro- 
verbs, Matthew,  Luke.  Ecclesiastical  au- 
thorities, collecting  books  and  arranging 
them  to  form  a  canon  of  scripture,  were 
governed  not  by  chronological  considera- 
tions, but  by  the  desire  to  educate  and  edify 
their  readers.  Then,  too,  parchment  was 
expensive,  so  that  on  grounds  of  sheer 
33 


THE    LIFE    OF    JESUS 

economy  manuscripts  would  bo  combined 
with  little  or  no  reference  to  their  interrela- 
tion— a  practice  that  must  have  frequently 
occurred  in  the  case  of  anonymous  hagio- 
grapha  such  as  the  Psalms  and  Proverbs. 

Though  uncertainty  still  attaches  to  the 
authorship  and  date  of  certain  Bible  books, 
in  most  cases  the  conclusions  reached  may 
be  regarded  as  fixed  beyond  any  likelihood 
of  further  controversy. 

The  non-Mosaic  authorship  of  the  Pen- 
tateuch is  a  conspicuous  instance  of  such 
assured  results  of  the  higher  criticism.  That 
Moses  was  not  the  author  of  the  first  five 
books  of  the  Bible  is  supported  by  evidence 
of  the  most  conclusive  sort.  How  could  he 
have  written  the  eulogy  on  himself,  or  the 
account  of  his  death,  recorded  in  the  thirty- 
fourth  chapter  of  Deuteronomy?  How  can 
one  harmonize  the  conflicting  legal  codes  of 
Exodus,  Leviticus,  Deuteronomy,  if  Moses 
drafted  all  three  ?^  How  could  he  have  said 
in  Deuteronomy,  that  Levites  are  on  a  basis 
of  equality  with  priests,  and  in  Leviticus 
have   accorded   them  a  lower  rank?     How 

*Exoa.  21-23;  Lev.  25,  et  passim,  Deut.  5. 

34 


THE    HIGHER    CRITICISM 

could  he  have  written  two  sets  of  ten  com- 
mandments differing  from  each  other  in  sev- 
eral important  particulars  V  Why  was  there 
no  "Levitical"  conduct  on  the  part  of  either 
priests  or  people  prior  to  the  year  450  B.  C 
if  "Leviticus"  was  the  work  of  Moses? 
"Would  the  noblest  and  most  God-fearing  men 
in  the  nation,  such  as  Hosea  and  the  first 
Isaiah,  have  violated  the  second  command- 
ment had  they  known  of  it?  We  are  forced 
to  conclude  that  it  originated  centuries  after 
Moses'  day. 

Again,  it  is  certain  that  David  did  not 
write  the  Psalms  that  bear  his  name,  be- 
cause, on  grounds  of  internal  evidence,  they 
must  be  assigned  in  part  to  the  exile  and  in 
part  to  the  Persian,  Greek  and  Maccabean 
periods  of  Jewish  history. 

Concerning  the  Gospels,  we  now  know  that 
they  were  not  the  work  of  eye-witnesses,  but 
the  product  of  a  complex  process  of  forma- 
tion that  began  with  the  Aramaic,  oral  trans- 
mission of  remembered  incidents  in  Jesus' 
life  and  of  sayings  from  his  discourses,  the 
whole  committed  to  writing,   sifted,  edited 

*  Compare  Exod.  20  with  Deut.  5. 

35 


THE    LIFE    OF    JESUS 

and  translated  into  Greek  only  after  Jesus 
had  been  dead  for  thirty  or  forty  years.  And 
so  cumulative  is  the  evidence  regarding  the 
reliability  of  the  record  that  we  are  war- 
ranted in  believing  our  Gospels  approximate 
the  original  words  of  Jesus  and  the  historic 
incidents  of  his  life  to  a  remarkable  and 
gratifying  degree. 

Of  Paul's  genuine  epistles  the  higher  criti- 
cism recognizes,  in  the  New  Testament,  not 
more  than  four — those  to  the  Romans,  to  the 
Galatians,  and  the  two  to  the  Corinthians. 
The  book  of  Acts  is  found  to  disagree  in 
many  points  with  statements  made  in  the 
genuine  epistles  of  Paul.  Moreover,  its  pas- 
sion for  conciliating  the  two  conflicting 
parties  in  the  early  church,  representing  the 
Jewish  and  the  Pauline  interpretations  of 
Christianity,  indicates  that  the  book  belongs 
to  a  generation  later  than  that  of  Peter  and 
Paul. 

Revelation,  the  last  book  of  the  New  Tes- 
tament, is  not,  however,  the  latest  in  the  col- 
lection. Rather  was  it  written  toward  the 
close  of  Domitian's  reign,  about  95  A.  D.,  as 
was  already  believed  in  the  time  of  Irengeus, 
36 


THE    HIGHER    CRITICISM 

who  recorded  a  tradition  assigning  the  book 
to  this  period.  Far  from  being  a  literary 
unit,  this  apocalypse  is  the  result  of  literary 
accretion  and  includes,  as  Harnack  has 
shown,  a  Jewish  apocalypse  in  five  of  its 
chapters.^ 

Such  are  some  of  the  results  relating 
to  Bible  books  upon  which  practical  unan- 
imity among  representatives  of  the  higher 
criticism  has  been  reached.  Why  do  these 
results  appear  to  many  minds  revolutionary? 
It  is  because  they  are  unaware  of  the  steps 
by  which  the  results  were  reached.  The 
ninety-five  theses  Luther  nailed  on  the 
church  door  in  Wittenberg  must  have  looked 
revolutionary  in  the  extreme  to  the  ordinary 
passer-by.  But  to  persons  acquainted  with 
the  writings  of  Luther's  immediate  prede- 
cessors, Wessel  and  Goch,  these  theses 
brought  no  terror,  for  all  are  to  be  found 
within  these  earlier  works.  Darwin's  ** Ori- 
gin of  Species"  looked  revolutionary  enough 
in  1859  to  most  American  and  English 
readers.  What  did  they  know  of  earlier 
thinkers  on  the  problem  of  evolution?     But 

^Kev.  11-13;   17;   18. 

37 


THE    LIFE    OF    JESUS 

to  those  who  had  read  the  works  of  Erasmus 
Darwin,  Robert  Chambers,  Lamarck,  Buffon, 
Goethe  and  Kant,  the  declarations  of  Charles 
Darwin  represented  but  the  latest  stage  in 
a  process  of  scientific  philosophizing  that 
had  been  in  progress  for  centuries  and  would 
not  end  with  the  ' '  Origin  of  Species. ' '  Birds, 
to  a  spectator  in  Tertiary  times,  might  well 
have  seemed  ''revolutionary"  had  he  been 
familiar  with  only  fishes  and  reptiles.  But 
in  our  museums  are  exhibited  specimens  of 
fossilized  creatures,  worthy  to  be  called 
either  avian  reptiles  or  reptilian  birds,  the 
intermediary  types  that  mark  the  slow 
transition  from  reptiles  to  true  birds  in  the 
evolution  of  animal  life. 

So  with  these  results  of  the  higher  criti- 
cism. To  people  unfamiliar  with  the  slow, 
successive  steps  by  which  they  were  attained, 
they  seem  startling  and  even  revolutionary, 
but  they  cease  to  appear  so  the  moment  their 
genesis  and  history  have  been  traced.  Then, 
too,  does  the  serious,  reverent,  constructive 
purpose  of  the  higher  criticism  come  into 
clearer  view.  Far  from  necessitating  the 
relinquishment  of  cherished  religious  affilia- 
38 


THE    HIGHER    CRITICISM 

tions,  the  liiglier  criticism  has,  among  ito 
leading  expositors,  both  at  home  and  abroad, 
clergymen  of  various  Christian  persuasions 
who  feel  no  compunction  about  retaining 
their  posts  and  whose  right  to  remain  where 
they  are  has  never  been  invaded.  Canon 
Cheyne  of  Rochester  Cathedral,  England; 
Canon  Driver  of  Christ  Church,  Oxford;  the 
Presbyterian  Doctors  of  Divinity,  Bruce  and 
Davidson  in  Scotland;  in  our  own  country 
the  Episcopalian,  J.  P.  Peters;  the  Presby- 
terian, Francis  Brown;  the  Congregation- 
alist,  George  F.  Moore — these  will  serve  to 
illustrate  the  point. 

These  scholars  perceive  the  inestimable 
value  to  religion  of  frank,  fearless  study 
of  Bible  literature.  They  feel  that  whatever 
modifications  of  personal  religious  belief  the 
results  of  scholarship  may  require,  such 
changes  will  be  certain  to  prevail,  and  with 
a  minimum  of  mental  disturbance,  because 
the  higher  criticism  is  essentially  construc- 
tive in  purpose.  These  men  rightly  hold 
that  the  real  spiritual  value  of  a  Bible  book 
abides,  let  the  higher  criticism  discover  what 
it  may. 

4  39 


THE    LIFE    OF    JESUS 

Has  the  spiritual  worth  of  the  "Imitation 
of  Christ"  declined  now  that  scepticism  has 
arisen  as  to  whether  or  not  a  Kempis  was 
its  author?  A  vade  mecum  for  those  who 
would  live  ' '  the  life  of  the  spirit ' '  that  man- 
ual of  meditation  will  remain,  though  criti- 
cism of  its  source  disproves  the  traditional 
authorship.  Suppose  it  were  true  that  Bacon 
wrote  the  plays  ascribed  to  Shakspere — 
and  there  is  some  measure  of  plausibility  in 
the  Baconian  position — would  these  dramas 
lose  any  of  their  inherent  and  immortal 
power  to  serve  the  higher  ends  of  human 
life!  Will  any  Christian  congregations  cease 
to  sing  certain  hymns  that  bore  Charles 
Wesley's  name,  now  that  it  has  been  dis- 
covered they  were  not  composed  by  him? 
Because  the  sayings  in  the  Sermon  on  the 
Mount  are  found  in  pre-Christian  Jewish 
literature  and  therefore  did  not  originate 
with  Jesus,  have  they  lost  their  life-giving 
value  and  Jesus  all  claim  to  originality? 
Shall  we  not  still  turn  to  the  Psalms  and 
to  the  Ten  Commandments,  though  David 
and  Moses  may  no  longer  be  identified  with 
their  authorship?  Did  the  geologist  and  the 
40 


THE    HIGHER    CRITICISM 

astronomer,  asks  Dr.  Crooker,  profane  the 
heavens  and  the  earth  when  they  banished 
from  planets  and  stars,  mountains  and  rivers 
the  divinities  with  which  a  superstitious  rev- 
erence had  endowed  them?  Nay,  for  the 
heavens  and  the  earth  are  still  the  dwelling 
place  of  the  Mysterious  and  the  Eternal. 

Similarly  the  apostles  of  the  higher  criti- 
cism did  not  profane  the  Bible  when  they 
banished  a  superstitious  reverence  for  it, 
brought  order  out  of  chaos,  arranged  the 
books  in  their  chronological  order  and  in- 
terpreted what  had  long  been  obscure  or 
meaningless.  On  the  contrary  they  rendered 
an  illuminating  service  the  beneficent  reac- 
tion of  which  on  the  religious  nature  has  al- 
ready made  itself  felt  wherever  the  achieve- 
ments of  the  higher  criticism  are  known. 
It  has  enabled  us  to  see,  as  never  before,  the 
divine  element  in  the  Bible  by  the  appeal 
which  it  makes  to  what  is  divine  in  us,  the 
thumb-prints  and  the  penciled  passages  prov- 
ing the  continued  power  of  the  Bible  to  sat- 
isfy the  heart,  to  comfort  its  sorrows,  calm 
its  tempests  and  fill  its  emptiness  with  a 
message  of  courage  and  of  hope. 
41 


II 

THE   BIRTH   OF   JESUS 

Our  chief  sources  of  information  concern- 
ing the  life  and  teaching  of  Jesus  are  the 
first  three  Gospels,  called  the  "Synoptics" 
because  of  their  common  viewpoint,  forming 
a  unitary  group.  The  Fourth  Gospel,  though 
of  inestimable  value  as  an  interpretation  of 
Jesus,  is  not  primarily  a  historical  or  bio- 
graphical work.  For  this  reason,  and  for 
others  which  will  be  discussed  in  a  later 
lecture,  we  are  compelled  to  confine  our  at- 
tention to  the  Synoptics.  And  even  in  our 
use  of  these  the  utmost  caution  must  be 
exercised,  for  the  real  Jesus  appears  only 
beneath  one  or  another  bias,  or  tendenz,  as 
the  Germans  call  it,  to  which  all  three  Gos- 
pels bear  witness.  Here  we  touch  one  of 
those  important  discoveries  which  have  re- 
42 


THE    BIRTH    OF    JESUS 

suited  from  application  of  tlie  method  of  the 
higher  criticism  to  the  records. 

In  view  of  the  prolonged,  patient,  reverent 
research  which  has  brought  significant  re- 
sults to  light,  we  cannot  any  longer  treat 
these  gospels  as  though  no  discoveries  had 
been  made.  Surely  our  only  honorable  and 
worthy  course  is  frankly  and  bravely  to  rec- 
ognize these  discoveries  and  then  adjust  our 
conception  of  the  gospels  and  of  Jesus  to 
the  discovered  facts.  Only  harm  can  come 
to  religion  from  refusing  to  look  facts  in 
the  face.  Nor,  in  my  judgment,  is  there  any- 
thing more  calculated  to  keep  young  people 
away  from  church  and  make  them  indifferent 
to  religion  than  the  suspicion  that  they  are 
being  trifled  with,  that  ministers  are  hedg- 
ing and  beating  about  the  bush,  instead  of 
frankly  telling  their  congregations  what  they 
have  discovered.  I  hold  that  our  only  safety 
lies  in  manfully  facing  verified  truths  and 
fearlessly  adjusting  our  thought  to  them. 
Moreover,  if  our  appreciation  of  Jesus  is  to 
have  a  solid  basis  in  historical  fact,  it  must 
be  an  appreciation  that  can  stand  the  light 
of  discoveries.  And  this  point  is  of  particu- 
43 


THE    LIFE    OF    JESUS 

lar  importance  just  now,  wlien  the  very  his- 
toricity of  Jesus  is  being  questioned.  The 
claim  to  have  demonstrated  the  non-reality 
of  the  historical  Jesus,  as  urged  by  Prof. 
Arthur  Drews  in  Germany  and  by  Prof. 
W.  B.  Smith  of  Tulane  University,  New  Or- 
leans, is  still  quite  inadequately  supported. 
Not  to  enter  at  this  time  upon  a  criticism  of 
the  work  of  these  scholars,  let  it  suffice  to 
observe  that  hitherto  it  has  been  altogether 
negative  in  character  and  content.  Neither 
scholar  has  thus  far  faced  the  positive  rea- 
sons on  which  our  belief  in  the  historic  Jesus 
is  built;  for  example,  the  priority  of  persons 
to  the  legends  concerning  them;  the  type  of 
Messiah  which  the  gospels  depict,  so  rad- 
ically different  from  the  popular  idea,  and 
which  can  be  accounted  for  only  on  the  as- 
sumption that  an  actual  Jesus  embodied  the 
type;  ihe  triumph  of  Christianity  over  its 
most  powerful  rival  in  the  Eoman  empire  be- 
cause its  hero  was  not  an  ethereal  abstrac- 
tion like  Mithra,  but  an  actual  person  who 
''went  about  doing  good."  Not  until  these 
two  leading  advocates  of  the  non-historicity 
of  Jesus  address  themselves  to  these  and 
U 


THE    BIRTH    OF    JESUS 

other  positive  aspects  of  the  question  shall 
we  be  justified  in  holding  that  we  have  as  yet 
a  single  valid  reason  for  disbelieving  in  an 
historical  Jesus. 

Coming  now  to  the  question  of  Jesus' 
birth,  let  us  recognize  at  the  outset  that  the 
subject  is  not  to  be  taken  up  merely  because 
of  any  intellectual  or  speculative  interest  it 
may  have,  but  because  of  its  ethical  and 
practical  implications.  Had  the  subject  none 
other  than  an  intellectual  interest,  I  should 
deem  it  an  unwarranted  waste  of  time  to 
discuss  it  from  this  platform.  It  is  because 
our  ideas  of  God  and  of  law,  of  man's  origin 
and  nature  and  of  the  essential  sanctity  of 
human  procreation  are  all  bound  up  with  the 
way  we  think  Jesus  was  born,  that  we  are 
devoting  a  lecture  to  the  subject.  Let  it 
be  further  recognized  that  the  question  hoiv 
Jesus  was  born  is  a  question  of  fact,  of  his- 
tory, and  as  such  it  has  to  be  treated  like 
every  other  question,  in  the  light  of  the  evi- 
dence adduced  in  support  of  it. 

For  myself,  permit  me  to  say  that  I  have 
no  prejudice  for  or  against  any  particular 
view.  I  cannot  imagine  a  free  truth-seeker 
45 


THE    LIFE    OF    JESUS 

being  prejudiced  for  or  against  a  particular 
conclusion  on  any  question.  His  sole  and 
supreme  desire  must  be  to  know  what  the 
truth  is  and  let  prejudices  and  predilections 
be  adjusted  to  it,  whatever  it  may  be.  And 
this,  I  take  it,  represents  also  the  spirit  and 
attitude  in  which  you  approach  the  subject. 
Let  us  then  examine  the  available  evidence, 
let  us  summon,  in  chronological  order,  those 
persons  who  lived  prior  to  the  middle  of  the 
second  century  of  our  era  (using  this  as  a 
convenient  terminus  ad  quern),  and  from 
whom  some  word  on  the  subject  might  be 
reasonably  expected. 

And  wherever  evidence  is  adduced  let  us 
note  both  the  nature  of  the  testimony  offered 
and  the  measure  of  value  we  are  justified  in 
attaching  to  it. 

Beginning  with  Jesus  himself,  we  find  that 
he  is  nowhere  represented  as  alluding  to 
the  subject.  On  the  other  hand,  there  are 
passages  in  the  Gospels  which  seem  to  point 
to  his  belief  in  a  purely  human  origin  of 
himself,  as  of  the  other  members  of  the  fam- 
ily. Indeed,  the  language  in  which  he  is 
quoted  as  addressing  his  mother  positively 
46 


THE    BIRTH    OF    JESUS 

precludes  the  possibility  of  his  having  re- 
garded her  as  differentiated  from  all  other 
mothers.^ 

Nor  does  Mary  make  any  allusion  to  the 
birth  of  Jesus.  Yet  the  earliest  of  the  Gos- 
pels (Mark)  attributes  to  her  (as  to  others) 
the  words,  "He  is  beside  himself,"  words 
which  it  would  hardly  seem  she  could  have 
said  of  Jesus  had  she  thought  of  him  as 
miraculously  born.^ 

We  come  next,  in  order,  to  the  Apostle 
Paul,  earliest  of  the  New  Testament  writers. 
He  died  about  thirty-five  years  after  Jesus. 
His  letters  were  written  between  the  years 
50  and  64  A.  D.,  the  first  of  them  (Gala- 
tians)  twenty  years  before  the  earliest  of 
the  Gospels.  Though  uncertainty  still  at- 
taches to  the  authorship  of  many  of  the 
epistles  ascribed  to  him,  the  letter  to  the 
Galatians  and  that  to  the  Romans  are  gen- 
erally conceded  to  be  genuine  productions 
of  the  Apostle.  It  is  in  these,  and  these 
only,  that  Paul  makes  mention  of  Jesus' 
birth,  and  when  we  read  what  is  there  writ- 

'See   Matt.   12  :  48;    Mark  3  :  33;    Luke   2  :  48,  49;   cf. 
John   2  :  4. 

=  Mark  3  :  21b,  31. 

47 


THE    LIFE    OF    JESUS 

ten  we  observe  that  not  only  does  he  make 
no  allusion  to  a  "virgin"  birth,  but  dis- 
tinctly affirms  the  altogether  natural  origin 
of  Jesus.  "Made  of  the  seed  of  David,  ac- 
cording to  the  flesh,"  are  the  words  he  used 
in  his  letter  to  the  Eomans.^ 

And  in  his  letter  to  the  Galatians,  Paul 
puts  the  mode  of  Jesus '  birth  in  such  a  form 
as  to  indicate  that  it  behooved  him  to  be 
born  in  the  same  way  as  those  who  were  to 
be  redeemed,  "made  of  a  woman,  made  un- 
der the  law. ' '  ^  Yet  what  an  incalculable  ad- 
vantage it  Avould  have  been  for  the  apostle 
if,  in  presenting  his  theory  of  Jesus  as  the 
Saviour  of  mankind,  he  could  have  backed 
it  with  an  account  of  a  supernatural  birth! 
Certainly  if  there  already  existed  in  his  time 
such  a  belief,  Paul  would  have  known  it.  He 
was,  you  will  remember,  the  guest  of  Jesus' 
disciple,  Peter,  and  for  the  space  of  a  fort- 
night in  Jerusalem.^  During  that  visit  he 
must  have  learned  everything  of  vital  im- 
portance concerning  Jesus  and  assuredly  of 

» Rom,  1  :  3. 
'Gal.  4  :  4. 
•  Gal.  1  :  18. 

48 


THE    BIRTH    OF    JESUS 

a  miraculous-birth  story,  had  such  existed. 
It  would  thus  seem  that  prior  to  the  year 
64,  the  year  of  Paul's  death,  belief  in  a  su- 
pernatural birth  of  Jesus  was  not  in  circu- 
lation. 

If  now  we  turn  to  the  so-called  ''triple 
tradition,"  i.  e.,  the  story  of  Jesus'  life  in 
which  the  first  three  Gospels  agree,  we  find 
they  are  not  at  one  regarding  the  nature  of 
his  birth.  For  while  Matthew  and  Luke  con- 
tain a  virgin-birth  story,  Mark  has  no  birth 
story  whatever.  On  the  other  hand,  all  three 
Gospels  contain  an  account  of  Jesus'  bap- 
tism, and  all  three  represent  Jesus  as  then 
receiving  ''the  Holy  Spirit."  Whereas,  if 
these  writers  had  known  of  a  virgin  birth  of 
Jesus  they  would  necessarily  have  identified 
his  receiving  the  Holy  Spirit  with  that 
miraculous  event,  and  not  with  his  baptism. 
Hence,  we  are  forced  to  conclude  (and  the 
point  will  shortly  be  dwelt  upon  more  fully) 
that  the  birth-narratives  of  Matthew  and 
Luke  formed  no  part  of  their  original  text, 
but  were  added  at  a  later  day. 

Next,  in  the  order  of  authorities  to  be  con- 
sulted, is  the  author  of  the  Gospel  accord- 
49 


THE    LIFE    OF    JESUS 

ing  to  Mark,  written  about  the  year  70 
A.  D.  Here,  once  more,  we  find  no  allusion 
to  a  virgin  birth.  Would  this  writer,  the 
earliest  of  all  our  biographers  of  Jesus,  have 
begun  his  record  with  the  baptism  of  Jesus 
and  omitted  the  narrative  of  a  virgin  birth, 
had  it  been  current  in  his  day?  Nay  more, 
would  he  have  mentioned  Jesus  as  one  of  four 
brothers^  if  he  believed  him  to  have  been 
born  in  an  altogether  different  way  from 
that  in  which  they  came  into  the  world  1  And 
our  conviction  that  the  writer  of  this  Gos- 
pel knew  nothing  of  any  such  difference  is 
considerably  reenforced  when  we  compare 
his  version  with  that  in  the  other  two  Gos- 
pels of  the  familiar  proverb  regarding  the 
indifference  with  which  a  prophet  is  treated 
in  the  locality  where  he  is  known.  In  Mark 's 
version  we  read:  ^'A  prophet  is  not  without 
honor  but  in  his  own  country,  and  among 
his  own  kin,  and  in  his  own  house."  But 
in  the  versions  of  Matthew  and  Luke  the 
phrase  and  among  his  own  kin  is  sig- 
nificantly omitted,  because  to  have  retained 
it  would  have  been  wholly  incompatible  with 

» Mark  6:3,   4. 

50 


THE    BIRTH    OF    JESUS 

the  presence  in  these  Gospels  of  a  virgin- 
birth  story.  A  prophet  who  had  been  mir- 
aculously born  would  certainly  not  be  with- 
out honor  ' '  among  his  own  kin. ' '  ^ 

Passing  by,  for  a  moment,  the  testimony 
of  the  third  and  fourth  authorities  in  chron- 
ological order,  the  authors  of  the  gospels  ac- 
cording to  *' Matthew"  and  ''Luke,"  let  us 
note  the  testimony  of  the  author  of  the 
Fourth  Gospel,  written  about  the  year  120 
A.  D.  The  date  of  this  book  is  still  debated, 
but  the  increasing  tendency  among  represen- 
tatives of  the  higher  criticism  is  to  assign  it 
to  the  first  quarter  of  the  second  century. 
Here,  again,  no  reference  is  made  to  a  vir- 
gin birth,  but  twice  in  the  course  of  the  rec- 
ord Jesus  is  addressed  as  ''the  son  of  Jo- 
seph," and  on  neither  occasion  does  he  con- 
tradict it.^ 

What  an  immense  advantage  it  would  have 
been  to  the  author  of  the  Fourth  Gospel 
could  he  have  introduced  into  his  interpreta- 
tion of  Jesus  as  "the  Word"  incarnate,  the 
statement  that    he    was  miraculously  born! 

*  Compare   Matt.    13  :  57,    Luke   4  :  24,   and   Mark    6  :  4. 
^'John  1  :  45;   6  :  42. 

51 


THE    LIFE    OF    JESUS 

Prof.  Scott  in  his  monograph  on  this  Gospel^ 
takes  the  ground  that  the  author  ''must  cer- 
tainly have  known  the  tradition  of  the  virgin 
birth."  But  we  are  prompted  to  reply,  if 
that  tradition  was  regarded  as  of  recent  ori- 
gin in  Justin's  time, — some  twenty  years 
later  than  the  date  now  generally  accepted 
for  the  Fourth  Gospel, — may  it  not  be  fairly 
doubted  whether  the  doctrine  of  the  virgin 
birth  was  known  to  this  evangelist?  Again, 
Prof.  Scott  remarks  that  the  author  of  the 
Fourth  Gospel  "replaced  the  virgin  birth 
doctrine  by  that  of  the  incarnation  of  the 
Word."  But  a  doctrine  of  Christ's  origin  as 
"the  eternal  Son  of  God"  can  scarcely  be 
regarded  as  "replacing"  a  doctrine  of  his 
origin  as  "man."  What  we  read  in  the  pro- 
logue^  of  this  gospel  can  hardly  be  construed 
as  a  substitute  for  the  hypothesis  of  a  mirac- 
ulous birth. 

The  fact  that  the  Fourth  Gospel  deals  with 
a  unique  interpretation  of  the  person  of 
Jesus  and  contains  no  virgin-birth  story  to 
explain  his  temporary  human  manifestation 

^E.   F.   Scott:      "The   Fourth   Gospel,"   pp.  43,  187. 
•John  1  :1-18. 

52 


THE    BIRTH    OF    JESUS 

would  seem  to  indicate  that  the  story  was  un- 
known to  the  author,  more  especially  as  just 
such  a  story  harmonizes  with  his  conception 
of  Jesus  as  ^'the  only  begotten  Son." 

Keeping  within  the  first  two  centuries  of 
our  era,  we  come  next  to  a  group  of  early 
Christian  Fathers  who  flourished  toward  the 
close  of  the  first  century :  Clement  of  Rome, 
Polycarp  of  Smyrna,  Ignatius  of  Antioch. 
We  read  their  'betters"  and  search  in  vain 
for  any  allusion  to  a  virgin  birth  of  Jesus. 
On  the  other  hand  we  observe  that  all  three 
of  these  Fathers  discuss  the  doctrine  of  the 
incarnation,  namely,  that  Jesus  of  Nazareth 
was  the  embodiment  of  God.  But  none  of  the 
grounds  on  which  they  argue  in  support  of 
this  belief  concerns  the  nativity  of  Jesus. 
How  it  would  have  strengthened  their  posi- 
tion could  they  have  availed  themselves  of  a 
belief  in  his  miraculous  birth !  In  the  absence 
of  any  reference  to  it  we  seem  driven  to  the 
conclusion  that  even  as  late  as  the  year  100 
the  belief  in  the  virgin  birth  of  Jesus  was  not 
yet  known  to  the  Christian  church. 

It  is  in  the  writings  of  Justin  the  Martyr, 
who  flourished  about  the  middle  of  the  sec- 
53 


THE    LIFE    OF    JESUS 

ond  century,  that  we  meet,  for  the  first  time, 
a  reference  to  the  virgin  birth  of  Jesus.  But 
note  what  Justin  says  on  the  subject.  He 
refers  to  it  as  a  newly-presented  doctrine, 
and  when  asked  if  he  believed  it,  replied  by 
pointing  to  the  Romans  and  the  Greeks,  who 
held  a  corresponding  belief  about  the  origin 
of  their  heroes,  and  urging  this  fact  as  suf- 
ficient ground  for  a  like  belief  in  the  super- 
natural paternity  of  Jesus.  Was  it  not  be- 
lieved that  Plato  was  the  son  of  Apollo  and 
Periktione,  that  Augustus  was  born  of  Ju- 
piter and  Attia,  that  Julius  Caesar  was  born 
in  the  temple  of  Apollo,  the  son  of  a  God? 
How  much  more  then  might  this  be  contended 
in  the  case  of  Jesus  the  Christ?  Such,  in  sub- 
stance, was  Justin's  thought  as  he  worked 
it  out  in  his  "Dialogue  with  Trypho,  the 
Jew. ' '  Thus  it  appears  that  down  to  the  year 
140  not  a  single  Christian  writer,  excepting 
the  authors  of  the  Gospels  of  Matthew  and 
Luke,  makes  any  reference  to  a  virgin  birth 
of  Jesus.  But  when  we  turn  to  those  two 
sources,  we  find  that  in  several  important 
particulars  they  are  mutually  contradictory 
and  hopelessly  irreconcilable.  Close  and 
54 


THE    BIRTH    OF    JESUS 

careful  study  of  their  discrepancies  has  led 
many  critics  to  the  conclusion  that  the  open- 
ing chapters  of  the  First  and  Third  Gospels 
formed  no  part  of  the  original  record,  but 
were  given  a  place  in  it  after  the  middle  of 
the  second  century.  If  this  opinion  be  cor- 
rect— and  it  has  the  support  of  a  host  of  emi- 
nent scholars — it  follows  that  were  we  in  pos- 
session of  a  New  Testament  manuscript  writ- 
ten early  in  the  third  century  or  toward  the 
close  of  the  second  century,  we  should  not 
find  these  chapters  part  of  the  record,  prov- 
ing them  to  have  been  interpolated,  precisely 
as  other  passages  are  universally  conceded 
to  have  been  added  to  the  original  record. 
Conspicuous  among  these  are  the  resurrec- 
tion narrative  at  the  end  of  the  Gospel  of 
Mark^,  the  famous  passage  so  often  used  as 
a  proof-text  for  the  doctrine  of  the  Trinity,^ 
and  the  closing  clause  of  the  Lord's  Prayer.-'' 
All  of  these  passages  are  missing  in  the  two 
earliest  extant  manuscripts  of  the  New  Tes- 
tament, the  Sinaitic  and  the  Vatican,  written 
about  350  A.  D. 

»  Mark  16  :  9-20.  '  I  John  5  :  7. 

»  Matt.  6  :  13. 

5  55 


THE    LIFE    OF    JESUS 

If  I  were  conducting  an  ''adults'  study- 
class,  ' '  it  would  be  interesting  and  instructive 
to  enter  upon  a  detailed  examination  of  the 
birth-narratives  in  Matthew  and  Luke.  Suf- 
fice it  for  our  present  purpose  to  fix  atten- 
tion upon  only  the  three  most  telling  points. 

In  the  first  place,  we  note  that,  while  both 
evangelists  present  genealogies  of  Jesus, 
they  are  not  only  contradictory  and  mutually 
exclusive,  but,  what  is  strangest  of  all,  they 
trace  Jesus'  ancestry  by  Joseph's  pedigree, 
not  through  that  of  Mary.  This  would  indi- 
cate that  the  authors  regarded  Jesus  as  the 
son  of  Joseph  and  that  these  genealogies  were 
prepared  before  the  virgin-birth  story  had 
come  into  existence.  For,  a  writer  who  be- 
lieves that  Jesus  was  born  of  a  virgin  would 
have  no  object  in  tracing  his  genealogy 
through  the  pedigree  of  a  human  father.  We 
have  no  alternative  but  to  believe  that  these 
genealogies  were  compiled  prior  to  the  story 
of  the  virgin  birth. 

Again,  in  the  sixteenth  verse  of  the  first 
chapter  of  the  Gospel  according  to  Matthew, 
we  read :  ' '  And  Jacob  begat  Joseph,  the  hus- 
band of  Mary,  of  whom  was  born  Jesus,  who 
56 


THE    BIRTH    OF    JESUS 

is  called  Christ."  But  in  the  so-called  "Si- 
naitic-Syriac"  manuscript,  a  palimpsest,  dis- 
covered on  Mount  Sinai  in  1892  by  Mrs.  Ag- 
nes Lewis  and  revealing  a  Syriac  version 
which  is  now  our  earliest  witness  to  the  text 
of  the  gospels,  we  find  this  verse  rendered  as 
follows:  ''Jacob  begat  Joseph.  Joseph,  to 
whom  was  espoused  the  Virgin  Mary,  begat 
Jesus,  who  is  called  Christ." 

In  other  words,  in  this,  our  ultimate  source 
of  appeal,  we  have  it  explicitly  stated  that 
Joseph  begat  Jesus  (as  Jacob  begat  Jo- 
seph), thus  testifying  to  belief  in  the  human 
paternity  of  Jesus.  The  third  feature  of 
these  narratives,  worthy  of  special  note,  is 
the  mistranslation  of  the  Hebrew  word  *'al- 
mah,"  as  ''a  virgin,"  in  the  quotation  from 
Isaiah  which  the  writer  of  the  Gospel  of  Mat- 
thew cites  in  the  twenty-third  verse  of  his 
first  chapter  in  order  to  confirm  his  belief 
that  the  Old  Testament  prefigured  the  birth 
of  Jesus  without  a  human  father.  "Behold, 
a  virgin  shall  conceive  and  bring  forth  a  son 
and  shall  call  his  name  Immanuel."^  And 
the  context  plainly  shows  that  the  Hebrew 

->  Isa.  7  :  14. 

57 


THE    LIFE    OF    JESUS 

prophet  referred  not  to  some  far-off,  divine 
event,  much  less  to  a  Messiah,  though  the 
evangelist  put  this  interpretation  upon  the 
passage  he  quoted.  Just  what  was  it,  then, 
that  Isaiah  meant  to  convey?  His  sovereign, 
Ahaz,  King  of  Judah,  is  despondent  over  the 
impending  attack  of  the  allied  enemies,  Israel 
and  Syria.  The  prophet  comes  to  instil  cour- 
age and  faith  into  the  king's  heart,  and  he 
succeeds  by  saying  that  before  a  boy,  to 
whom  a  young  woman  has  just  given  birth, 
would  have  time  to  learn  the  difference  be- 
tween good  and  evil,  the  land  of  the  enemy 
would  be  deserted.  And  so  this  mother,  from 
sheer  joy  over  Yahweh's  concern  for  the 
well-being  of  his  people,  calls  the  babe  '*Im- 
manuel"  (God  with  us)  as  a  token  of  her 
abiding  trust  in  the  permanence  of  His  pro- 
tecting care. 

It  should  be  always  remembered  when 
reading  quotations  such  as  this,  that  the  Sy- 
noptic writers  believed  Jesus  was  the  Mes- 
siah and,  so  believing,  they  wrote  their  biog- 
raphies from  this  standpoint.  And,  thinking 
that  the  Old  Testament  contained  accounts  of 
Messiah,  they  instinctively  turned  to  it, 
58 


THE    BIRTH    OF    JESUS 

either  to  confirm  what  they  had  already 
learned  concerning  Jesus,  or  to  supply  infor- 
mation on  points  concerning  which  no  data 
were  at  hand.  Moreover,  when  once  the  pro- 
cess of  idealizing  Jesus  had  started,  and  he 
became  identified  with  the  Messiah,  it  was  but 
natural  that  his  birth  should  be  interpreted 
in  terms  of  the  marvelous.  In  other  words, 
we  account  for  the  rise  of  belief  in  the  mirac- 
ulous birth  of  Jesus  in  accordance  with  that 
law  of  legendary  growth  which  has  ever  been 
operative  in  all  religions.  Given,  the  moral 
and  spiritual  greatness  of  Jesus,  the  adora- 
tion and  love  which  that  greatness  inspired; 
given  the  belief  that  Jesus  is  the  Messiah; 
given  also  an  interval  of  thirty-five  years 
between  his  death  and  the  appearance  of  the 
earliest  of  the  Gospels,  during  which  the  leg- 
endarizing  process  grew,  and  the  conditions 
were  provided  to  produce  the  wonder-stories 
of  his  birth  and  childhood,  his  entrance  upon 
his  chosen  calling,  his  ministry  and  his  death, 
as  we  find  them  in  the  familiar  Gospel  forms. 
Within  the  limit  prescribed  for  these  lec- 
tures it  has  not  been  possible  to  do  more  than 
59 


THE    LIFE    OP    JESUS 

briefly  consult  those  sources  of  information 
regarding  the  birth  of  Jesus  from  which  light 
could  be  expected.  We  have  seen  that  Jesus, 
Mary  his  mother,  Paul,  the  triple-tradition, 
the  Gospel  of  Mark,  the  Fourth  Gospel,  Clem- 
ent, Polycarp,  Ignatius,  make  no  mention  of 
a  miraculous  birth  of  Jesus,  Only  two  of  the 
eleven  leading  informants  in  the  first  century 
and  a  half  of  our  era  report  a  virgin-birth 
story — the  authors  of  the  first  and  third  Gos- 
pels, written  within  a  decade  or  two  of  each 
other  toward  the  close  of  the  first  century. 
And  not  the  least  significant  feature  of  these 
gospels  is  the  fact  that,  whereas  their  open- 
ing chapters  report  a  miraculous  birth  of 
Jesus,  it  is  subsequently  contradicted,  by  im- 
plication, in  several  passages,^  thereby  com- 
pelling the  conviction  that  these  opening 
chapters  were  no  part  of  the  original  record. 
And  since  Justin  was  the  first  of  the  Fathers 
to  make  allusion  to  the  belief  in  a  miraculous 
birth  of  Jesus,  and  referred  to  it  as  some- 
thing new,  we  infer  that  the  first  and  second 
chapters  of  the  Gospels  according  to  Mat- 

*Matt.   12:48;    Luke   2:33-50;    3:23    ("as  was   sup- 
posed"). 

60 


THE    BIRTH    OF    JESUS 

thew  and  Luke  were  incorporated  about  the 
middle  of  the  second  century. 

From  time  to  time  books  have  appeared 
whose  authors  have  attempted  to  demon- 
strate a  Buddhistic  origin  for  the  virgin-birth 
story,  but  the  arguments  adduced  are  de- 
fective at  so  many  points  as  to  be  wholly  in- 
conclusive. Furthermore,  we  have  no  evi- 
dence whatever  of  the  existence  of  any  of  the 
alleged  ' '  channels ' '  through  which  Buddhism 
influenced  primitive  Christianity.  The  testi- 
mony of  the  late  Max  Miiller  is  decisive  on 
this  point.  ''I  have  been  looking,"  he  wrote 
in  the  second  volume  of  his  ''Essays,"  ''for 
such  channels  all  my  life,  but  have  found 
none.  What  I  have  found  is  that  there  are 
historical  antecedents  for  the  startling  coinci- 
dences in  the  birth  stories  of  Jesus  and  of  the 
Buddha.  If  we  know  these  antecedents  the 
coincidences  become  far  less  startling." 
Nor,  again,  is  it  in  the  least  necessary  to  ap- 
peal to  a  foreign  source  for  what  we  read  in 
the  Gospel  narratives  of  Jesus '  birth.  All  the 
details  of  the  two  virgin-birth  stories  were 
furnished  on  Palestinian  soil  by  ancient  tra- 
ditions, and,  above  all,  by  familiarity  with 
61 


THE    LIFE    OF    JESUS 

the  Old  Testament,  the  repository  of  ' '  Messi- 
anic" predictions  whose  fulfilment,  it  was 
believed,  was  made  manifest  in  the  life  of 
Jesus.  Under  the  stress  of  this  controlling 
idea — the  fulfilment  of  prophecy — practically 
all  the  elements  in  the  birth  stories  were 
shaped.  It  determined  Bethlehem  as  the 
birthplace  of  Jesus.  It  brought  the  magi  to 
the  manger  with  their  gifts  and  under  guid- 
ance of  a  star.  It  settled  the  place  of  Jo- 
seph's flight,  for  had  not  Hosea  said:  ''I 
.  .  .  called  my  son  out  of  Egypt" ?^  Did 
not  the  prophet  Micah  predict  that  "out  of 
thee  (Bethlehem)  shall  he  come  forth  .  .  . 
that  is  to  be  ruler  of  Israel  "^^  And  is  it  not 
written  in  the  book  of  Numbers,  ' '  there  shall 
come  a  Star  out  of  Jacob"?  True,  in  none 
of  these  passages  was  there  any  such  import 
intended.  But  the  evangelists  did  not  limit 
their  treatment  of  Scripture  by  the  original 
sense  of  its  contents.  Eather  did  they  em- 
ploy the  Rabbinical  method,  which  drew  from 
every  suggestive  passage  the  particular 
meaning  that  was  required,  so  eager  were 

»  Hos.  11  :  1. 

'  Mic.  5  :  2. 

62 


THE    BIRTH    OF    JESUS 

they  to  secure  confirmation  for  their  story 
in  prophecy.  Clearly  there  is  no  need  to  sup- 
ply a  pagan  substratum  for  the  various  ele- 
ments of  the  Gospel  narratives  of  Jesus' 
birth,  for  all  have  their  clear  roots  in  the 
ideas  and  phrases  of  Hebrew  scripture.^  And 
by  as  much  as  the  moral  elements  in  Buddha 
and  Zoroaster,  and  other  great  religious  lead- 
ers have  many  traits  in  common,  it  ought  not 
to  be  surprising  that  poetic  imagination  cre- 
ated stories  of  their  birth  and  childhood  akin 
to  what  we  read  in  the  Gospels.  We  account 
for  the  rise  of  all  such  stories,  partly  in  terms 
of  the  transcendent  personality  of  which  they 
tell  and  partly  in  terms  of  the  popular  as- 
sumption, universal  among;  the  ancients,  that 
characters  of  exceptional  worth  must  have 
had  a  supernatural  origin.  Thus  do  the  leg- 
ends that  have  gathered  about  these  great 
leaders  testify  at  once  to  their  exalted  char- 
acter and  to  the  reverence  and  love  it  cre- 
ated in  the  hearts  of  their  biographers. 

Analyze  in  detail,  if  you  will,  the  Gospel 
story  of  the  nativity,  call  attention  to  the 
physical  impossibility  of  a  star  being  tem- 

^  Num.  24  :  17. 

63 


THE    LIFE    OF    JESUS 

porarily  stationed  over  a  particular  hamlet, 
designating  with  precision  the  particular  sta- 
ble; note  the  unhistorical  allusions  to  Her- 
od 's  decree  and  to  the  taking  of  a  census ;  in- 
sist that  shepherds  would  not  be  "watching 
their  flocks  by  night"  in  December,  and  that 
''magi"  would  not  have  found  it  practicable 
to  take  so  long  a  journey  in  that  rainy  sea- 
son ;  but  pray  do  not  fail  to  see  the  meaning 
of  these  picturesque  details.  This  myth  of 
the  moving,  guiding  star,  what  is  it  but  a 
transcription  of  the  popular  conviction  that 
Jesus,  having  been  exceptionally  great,  must 
have  been  ushered  into  the  world  under  di- 
vine auspices?  And  the  journey  of  the 
''magi"  bringing  their  gifts,  what  is  it  but  a 
symbol  of  the  desire  of  Jesus'  contempora- 
ries to  do  all  in  their  power  to  celebrate  his 
coming  into  the  world? 

Read  the  exquisite  legend  as  history,  and 
at  every  turn  reason  and  the  sense  of  his- 
torical veracity  rebel.  Read  it  as  religious 
poetry,  or  drama,  and  at  once  the  "opened 
heavens"  suggest  no  impossible  parting  of 
sky,  but  a  real  illumination  of  the  minds  and 
hearts  of  the  first  Christians;  the  angel- 
64 


THE    BIRTH    OF    JESUS 

presences,  no  visible  forms,  but  the  spiritual 
qualities  of  faith,  hope,  and  charity,  which 
the  Gospel  of  Jesus  had  awakened  in  men's 
hearts;  the  heavenly  anthem,  no  audible 
song  from  above,  but  an  echo  from  within 
of  the  beatitudes  and  the  parables.  And  in 
thus  preserving  the  truth  of  the  legend 
while  rejecting  its  form,  we  insure  the  per- 
manent appeal  of  the  Christmas  festival,  se- 
curing it  against  the  possibility  of  either 
becoming  obsolete  or  of  losing  its  power  to 
stir  and  gladden  the  heart.  And  all  the  po- 
etic associations  of  Christmas,  its  pure  joys 
and  tender  memories,  its  fraternal  congratu- 
lations and  spontaneous  charities,  its  actual 
endeavors  at  living  the  life  of  goodwill  and 
peace — all  these  combine  to  create  a  firmer 
and  more  enduring  stronghold  for  Christian- 
ity than  the  creeds  of  the  churches  and  the 
centuries. 

It  was  at  Rome  in  the  fourth  century  and 
after  prolonged  controversy,  that  December 
twenty-fifth  was  finally  decided  upon  as  the 
birthday  of  Jesus.  The  immediate  reason  for 
so  late  a  settlement  of  this  long-debated  ques- 
tion was  that  Judaism,  out  of  which  Chris- 
65 


THE    LIFE    OF    JESUS 

tianity  sprang,  had  no  feast-day  in  its  calen- 
dar that  could  be  Christianized  into  a  cele- 
bration of  the  birth  of  Jesus,  as  was  the 
Passover  into  Easter.  In  view  of  the  belief, 
held  by  the  followers  of  Jesus,  that  he  would 
soon  return  to  earth,  questions  pertaining  to 
his  birth  and  ancestry,  his  childhood  and 
youth  were  of  little  interest.  Attention  was 
centered  upon  his  second  coming.  But 
toward  the  middle  of  the  second  century,  as 
the  hope  of  his  return  grew  steadily  weaker, 
speculation  on  these  subjects  grew  rife.  Va- 
rious Christian  communities  ventured  to  as- 
sign a  date  for  the  nativity,  but  in  no  two 
instances  was  the  date  the  same.  Aware  of 
these  differences,  a  French  writer  some  years 
ago  wrote  a  book  showing  that  every  month 
in  the  year  had  at  some  time,  somewhere, 
been  settled  upon  as  the  month  in  which 
Jesus  was  born.  Finally,  however,  the  com- 
munity at  Rome  succeeded  in  getting  Decem- 
ber twenty-fifth  universally  accepted.  Two 
reasons  were  operative  in  the  selection  of 
this  date.  First,  because  from  very  early 
times  it  had  been  observed  as  "the  birthday 
of  the  unconquerable  sun,"  a  "heathen"  fes- 
66 


THE    BIRTH    OF    JESUS 

tival  following  directly  upon  the  longest 
night  of  the  winter  solstice.  Again,  the  Ro- 
man Saturnalia,  a  week  devoted  to  unre- 
strained rejoicing  and  merry-making,  reached 
its  climax  about  December  twenty-fifth.  This 
festival  was  held  in  honor  of  the  "Golden 
Age"  which  the  Romans  placed  in  a  far-off 
past.  It  was  a  season  of  unbounded  hospi- 
tality and  good  fellowship,  and  in  our  modern 
Christmas  celebrations  many  of  the  features 
of  the  Saturnalia  have  been  preserved.  In 
so  far  as  the  choice  of  the  Christian  church 
was  influenced  by  these  ''heathen"  celebra- 
tions it  showed  wisdom  and  tact.  For,  if  the 
heathen  were  to  be  converted  to  Christianity, 
it  was  eminently  desirable  that  their  customs 
and  beliefs  should  not  be  ruthlessly  dis- 
carded, but,  as  far  as  possible,  adopted  and 
adapted  to  Christian  requirements.  Was  not 
Jesus  called  "the  Light  of  the  World?"  Had 
he  not  been  spoken  of  as  "  the  Sun  of  Right- 
eousness?" Could  there  be  any  other  event 
in  Christian  history  more  calculated  to  stir 
sentiments  of  joy  and  goodwill  than  the  birth 
of  Jesus  1  What  more  natural  and  diplomatic 
choice^  therefore,  could  Christian  mdssion- 
67 


THE    LIFE    OF    JESUS 

aries  to  the  heathen  have  made  than  Decem- 
ber twenty-fifth?  Hence,  ever  since  the  year 
325  or  thereabouts,  Christmas  has  been  cele- 
brated on  this  day,  and  January  sixth,  on 
which  a  joint  celebration  of  Jesus'  birthday 
and  *'the  Epiphany"  had  previously  been 
held,  was  reserved  for  the  latter  festival 
alone. 

Eeverting  to  the  wonder-stories  of  the  Gos- 
pels, and  particularly  to  the  virgin-birth 
story,  it  must  be  clear  what  the  attitude  of 
the  thoughtful  reader  toward  them  will  be. 

Far  from  discarding  them  as  worthless 
myths,  he  will  treasure  them  among  the  su- 
preme proofs  preserved  to  us  of  the  moral 
and  spiritual  greatness  of  Jesus  and  of  the 
reverence  and  love  which  that  greatness  pro- 
voked in  the  hearts  of  his  contemporaries 
and  biographers.  Had  Jesus  been  a  man 
of  smaller  mould,  no  such  birth-stories  would 
ever  have  been  written  concerning  him. 
Wonder-tales  are  never  told  of  commonplace 
people.  It  was  because  Jesus  transcended 
the  limits  of  ordinary,  average  human  nature 
that  there  grew  up  around  his  personality 
68 


THE    BIRTH    OF    JESUS 

the  significant  legends  of  the  Gospels  and  of 
the  ''Apocrypha." 

Hence  these  birth  stories,  while  not  at  all 
records  of  his  origin,  are  yet  spontaneous 
products  of  the  influence  exerted  by  his  own 
great  life.  They  are  not  histories  of  fact,  but 
symbols  of  the  quality  of  his  person.  They 
are  poetic  expressions  of  the  popular  faith 
that,  being  so  unusual  a  character,  Jesus 
must  have  been  born  in  an  unusual  way. 
They  represent  that  ''truth  of  poetry  which 
is  more  than  the  truth  of  history,"  as  Aris- 
totle taught.  They  are  first-class  historical 
accounts  in  the  sense  that  they  furnish  proof, 
and  to  a  greater  degree  than  aught  else,  of 
the  moral  and  spiritual  grandeur  of  him  who 
called  them  forth.  To-day,  it  is  true,  the  law 
of  legendary  growth  would  preclude  the  rise 
of  a  virgin-birth  story  concerning  any  tran- 
scendent personality,  not  merely  because  the 
notion  contradicts  the  recognized  conditions 
of  human  origination,  but  more  because  it 
does  violence  to  the  sanctity  attaching  to  the 
holiest  of  human  mysteries.  Assuredly  it  did 
not  occur  to  the  first  and  third  evangelists 
that,  while  their  birth-stories  did  honor  to 
69 


THE    LIFE    OF    JESUS 

Jesus,  they  cast  a  slur  on  fatherhood.  Yet, 
for  us,  in  the  modern  world,  there  can  be  no 
other  view. 

So  wonderful  and  universal  is  the  fact  of 
sex  and  so  increasingly  pronounced  does  it 
become  the  higher  we  ascend  in  the  scale  of 
animal  life,  that  we  are  constrained  to  regard 
it  as  an  ordained  condition  of  being.  Who 
knows  but  what  biology  may  yet  warrant  the 
saying,  *'no  sex,  no  life."  Hence,  to  think 
a  virgin  birth  ''holier"  than  that  which  is 
ordained  as  a  law  of  being,  as  a  condition  of 
existence,  is  to  cast  a  slur  upon  both  father- 
hood and  motherhood. 

But,  to  revert  to  the  Grospel-legend  and  the 
inspirations  that  produced  it,  let  us  see  to 
it  that,  instead  of  echoing  the  shallow  criti- 
cism which  fancies  it  has  revealed  the  total 
truth  about  these  birth  stories  when  it  has 
stigmatized  them  ''the  worthless  product  of 
an  age  steeped  in  superstition, ' '  we  recognize 
with  gratitude  their  imperishable  worth  and 
appraise  them  for  what  they  really  are, — 
testimonies  to  the  transcendent  qualities  of 
Jesus'  character  and  life.  Let  us  set  these 
spiritual  songs  and  these  poetical  tableaux 
70 


THE    BIRTH    OF    JESUS 

which  make  up  the  Gospel  narratives  of 
Jesus'  birth,  by  the  side  of  the  splendid 
organ-chant  of  Milton's  ''Nativity,"  and  the 
beautiful  pictures  of  Raphael  and  Botticelli, 
Correggio  and  Leonardo.  Then  shall  we  find 
in  it  deep  inexhaustible  meaning,  see  in  it 
that  "truth  of  poetry"  which  is  ''more  than 
the  truth  of  history. ' '  And  when  we  wish  to 
refresh  our  sense  of  the  essential  greatness 
of  Jesus,  we  will  turn  to  this  legend,  give 
ourselves  up  to  its  charm,  and  inhale  the  deli- 
cate perfume  of  these  first  garlands  of  rev- 
erence and  love,  woven  by  Gospel-writers 
around  the  infant  Nazarene. 


Ill 

THE   TEMPTATION   OF   JESUS 

We  saw  in  the  preceding  lecture  that  only 
two  of  the  earliest  sources  of  information 
concerning  Jesus  contain  a  virgin-birth  story. 
The  gospels  according  to  Matthew  and  Luke 
devote  their  two  opening  chapters  to  such  a 
story.  But  what  we  read  in  subsequent  chap- 
ters of  these  gospels  is  so  at  variance  with 
the  conception  of  a  miraculous  birth  as  to 
compel  the  conclusion  that  the  writers  knew 
nothing  of  it  whatsoever.  Indeed  there  seems 
no  alternative  left  to  us  but  to  believe  that 
a  virgin-birth  story  was  prefixed  to  the  Gos- 
pels of  Matthew  and  Luke  in  the  second  or 
third  decade  of  the  second  century,  when  the 
idealizing  impulse,  already  well  developed 
during  Jesus'  own  life-time,  originated  a 
theory  of  his  non-natural  birth.  Such,  at 
72 


THE    TEMPTATION    OF    JESUS 

least,  is  the  conviction  to  wliicli  the  latest 
results  of  the  higher  criticism  of  the  gospels 
lead. 

In  order  to  connect  our  study  of  the  temp- 
tation of  Jesus  with  that  of  the  mode  of  his 
birth,  let  us  briefly  review  the  records  relat- 
ing to  the  place  and  date  of  his  birth,  his 
childhood  and  education,  his  choice  of  a  voca- 
tion and  the  ceremony  of  self -consecration  to 
his  chosen  calling.  The  higher  criticism 
points  to  Nazareth  as  the  birthplace  of 
Jesus  and  to  4  B.  C.  as  approximately  the 
year  in  which  he  was  born.  The  chief  rea- 
son for  the  former  conclusion  is  furnished 
by  the  illuminating  controversy  recorded  in 
the  seventh  chapter  of  the  Fourth  Gospel. 
Here  we  find  one  of  Jesus'  audiences  di- 
vided as  to  the  nature  of  his  person.  Those 
opposed  to  the  belief  that  he  was  the  Mes- 
siah took  the  ground  that  ''this  man  is  from 
Nazareth"  (Galilee);  consequently  Jesus 
could  not  be  the  Messiah  (Christ)  because 
the  Old  Testament  had  declared  that  from 
Bethlehem,  David's  city,  the  Messiah  would 
come.  ''So  there  was  a  division  among  the 
people  because  of  him. ' '  In  other  words,  the 
73 


THE    LIFE    OF    JESUS 

actual  birth-place  of  Jesus  is  set  over  against 
the  theoretical  birth-place  required  by  Jewish 
belief. 

The  particular  value  of  the  debate  lies  in 
its  revelation  of  the  process  by  which  Beth- 
lehem found  its  way  into  the  gospel  tradi- 
tion, as  against  Nazareth. 

Two  passages  from  the  Gospels  enable  us 
to  fix  the  date  of  Jesus'  birth  as  not  later 
than  2  B.  C.  and  not  earlier  than  4  B.  C.  In 
the  first  verse  of  the  second  chapter  of  Mat- 
thew we  are  told  that  Jesus  was  born  '  *  in  the 
days  of  Herod  the  King. ' '  This  is  equivalent 
to  saying  he  was  born  in  or  prior  to  4  B.  C, 
Herod's  reign  having  extended  from  37  to  4 
B.  C.  Turning  to  Luke's  data  we  note  the 
statement  that  the  Baptist  began  his  ministry 
in  **the  fifteenth  year  of  the  reign  of  Ti- 
berius," i.  e.,  in  the  year  28  A.  D.,  and  that 
Jesus  was  then  ' '  about  thirty  years  of  age. ' ' 
From  this  we  infer  that  2  B.  C.  was  the  date 
of  his  birth.^  Elsewhere  in  the  same  GospeP 
the  date  is  identified  with  that  of  a  taxation- 
census  ordered  by  the  Syrian  Governor  Cy- 

*  Luke  3  :  1,  23. 

*  Luke  2  :  1-3. 

74 


THE    TEMPTATION    OF    JESUS 

renius.  But  this,  according  to  the  Roman  his- 
torians, occurred  in  6  A.  D.,  when  Herod  had 
been  dead  ten  years.  Moreover,  this  census 
would  not  have  included  Galilee,  according  to 
Eoman  law,  as  this  province  was  under  Anti- 
pas  and  not  Cyrenius.  Nor  would  the  census 
have  been  taken  at  the  ancestral  home  but 
at  the  actual  home  of  the  Eoman  subjects. 
Consequently,  we  conclude  that  either  in  the 
year  of  Herod's  death,  or  within  two  years 
of  it,  Jesus  was  born. 

Of  his  infancy  the  Apocryphal  Gospels  re- 
late a  number  of  incidents,  but  all  critics  are 
agreed  upon  the  wholly  unreliable,  spurious 
character  of  these  stories.  Yet  they  are  not 
void  of  value  on  that  account.  As  fanciful 
productions  they  bear  witness  to  a  recognized 
spiritual  greatness  of  Jesus.  In  other  words, 
it  was  felt  that  even  the  infancy  of  one  so  ex- 
ceptionally great  must  have  been  marked  by 
features  unique  and  marvelous.  Hence,  the 
creation,  with  the  aid  of  Old  Testament  nar- 
ratives, of  a  "Gospel  of  the  Infancy." 

Thus  do  these  stories  illustrate  once  more 
Aristotle's  statement  that  there  is  a  truth  of 
75 


THE    LIFE    OF    JESUS 

art  which  means  vastly  more  than  the  truth 
of  mere  history. 

Of  the  childhood  of  Jesus  we  have  no  reli- 
able information  whatsoever.  The  Apocry- 
phal Gospels  furnish  a  number  of  extraor- 
dinary wonder-stories  to  which  no  credibility 
can  be  attached.  Apart  from  these  we  have 
but  the  familiar  incident  recorded  by  Luke,^ 
of  the  boy  of  twelve,  discovered  in  the  temple 
discussing  religious  questions  with  doctors 
of  the  law.  Without  pausing  to  analyze  this 
story  in  detail,  suffice  it  to  say  that,  as  it 
stands,  it  can  hardly  be  accepted  as  histor- 
ical. It  may  have  a  basis  in  some  actual  oc- 
currence, but  in  the  form  in  which  it  has 
come  down  to  us  it  is  clearly  legendary,  a 
conclusion  to  which  we  are  forced  not  so 
much  by  the  prodigy  which  Jesus  here  ap- 
pears to  be — for  history  is  replete  with  par- 
allels; witness  what  Mozart,  Pope,  and,  just 
recently,  the  boy  Sidis  at  Harvard,  achieved 
before  they  entered  their  teens — but  by  the 
exceedingly  unnatural  attitude  of  the  parents 
toward  their  child  and  his  toward  them. 
How  could  they  be  all  day  en  route  from  Je- 

*  Luke  2  :  41-52. 

76 


THE    TEMPTATION    OF    JESUS 

rusalem  to  Nazareth  without  missing  tlie  boy 
till  the  evening  halt?^  Or  how  could  it  have 
taken  three  days  to  find  him?  How  could 
Jesus  show  no  realization  of  their  anxiety 
when,  after  three  days'  sorrowful  search, 
they  at  last  find  himP  How  could  he  have 
expressed  no  delight  in  seeing  them  again 
after  so  prolonged  a  separation,  but,  instead, 
have  spoken  the  strangely  sounding  words, 
''Wist  ye  not  that  I  must  be  about  my  Fath- 
er's business?"  Is  there  not  a  touch  of  the 
unfilial  in  the  tone  of  this  reply  to  parents 
who  had  agonized  over  his  long  disappear- 
ance ?  For  aught  we  know  the  story  may  be 
the  invention  of  a  pious  disciple  familiar  with 
the  narratives  of  Samuel,  and  wishing  to  lift 
the  veil  that  hung  over  the  childhood  of 
Jesus  found  in  these  material  at  hand  for  his 
purpose.  What  is  here  said  of  Jesus  had 
been  already  said  of  Samuel:  ''He  increased 
and  grew  and  was  in  favor  with  God  and 
man."^  And  Josephus  is  authority  for  the 
statement  that  "in  his  twelfth  year"  Samuel 
first  received  his  prophetic  call. 

"■  Luke   2  :  46.  '  Luke  2  :  48. 

» I  Sam.  1  :  18,  19. 

77 


THE    LIFE    OF    JESUS 

Of  the  education  Jesus  received  we  know 
nothing  directly.  We  can  but  infer  from 
scattered  passages  in  the  Old  and  New  Tes- 
taments what  that  education  must  have  been. 
Besides  the  light  thrown  on  the  question  by 
occasional  verses  in  the  Pentateuch  and  the 
Talmud  touching  the  requirements  of  the  Law 
in  matters  of  education,  we  gain  additional 
information  from  Josephus  and  from  the 
Apocrypha.  We  know  that  there  were  no 
public  schools  in  Palestine  till  the  year  65 
A.  D.,  and  that  all  Jewish  children  were  edu- 
cated first  at  home,  by  the  mother,  and  then 
at  the  Synagogue,  by  the  reader,  or  ''haz- 
zan." 

*'The  child  is  best  educated  which  has  been 
taught  by  its  mother,"  says  the  Talmud. 
From  her  the  child  learned  elementary  read- 
ing, the  rudiments  of  Jewish  Scripture,  be- 
ginning with  the  ' '  Shema, ' '  so-called  because 
the  verse  opens  with  that  word.  **Hear,  0 
Israel,  the  Lord  our  God  is  one  Lord."^  Add 
to  these  the  traditions  of  the  nation,  handed 
down,  by  oral  repetition,  from  father  to  son. 
This  home  teaching  was  supplemented  by  the 

'  Deut.  6  :  4. 

78 


THE    TEMPTATION    OF    JESUS 

education  received  at  the  Synagogue,  where 
the  *'hazzan,"  or  reader,  taught  the  children 
the  sacred  law  in  which  all  civil  and  religious 
duties  were  set  forth.  To  this  was  added  in- 
struction in  the  past  history  of  the  nation. 
Very  few  families  possessed  an  entire  copy 
of  the  Law,  but  it  appears  to  have  been  not 
uncommon  for  a  ''roll"  of  one  of  the  proph- 
ets or  selections  from  the  psalms  to  have  been 
possessed  by  the  poorer  families.  How  well 
Jesus  was  trained  in  the  directions  required 
in  his  day  is  indicated  by  several  references 
in  the  Gospels.  He  stands  up  in  the  syna- 
gogue at  Nazareth  to  read,  and  the  Hebrew 
vowelless  scroll  yields  its  meaning  to  him  at 
once,  and  he  forthwith  proves  himself  prac- 
tised in  the  art  of  interpreting  the  sacred 
text. 

The  Hebrew  prophets,  with  their  terrible 
invectives  against  idolatry  and  sin,  kindled 
the  moral  enthusiasm  of  Jesus;  the  Psalms 
developed  in  him  the  spiritual  sentiments  of 
reverence,  awe,  aspiration,  worship,  trust; 
while  such  Apocalypses  as  Daniel  and  Enoch 
acquainted  him  with  the  literary  form  in 
which  the  passionate  hope  of  a  Messianic 
79 


THE    LIFE    OF    JESUS 

kingdom  found  expression.  The  larger  cul- 
ture acquired  by  traveled  Jews  who  visited 
the  royal  library  at  Alexandria  or  who 
studied  at  Eome  did  not  come  within  the 
range  of  Jesus'  opportunity.  At  least 
there  is  nothing  in  any  of  the  transmit- 
ted records  to  indicate  that  he  ever  went 
more  than  a  few  miles  beyond  the  boundaries 
of  Palestine.  Of  Greek  language  and  litera- 
ture he  knew  nothing.  The  Palestinian  Tal- 
mud put  its  veto  on  such  studies  in  the  ana- 
thema, ' '  Cursed  be  he  who  breeds  swine  and 
who  teaches  his  son  the  wisdom  of  the 
Greeks. ' '  On  the  other  hand,  it  is  fairly  cer- 
tain that  Jesus  had  acquaintance  with  the 
teachings  of  the  famous  Pharisee,  Hillel,  an 
old  man  when  Jesus  was  a  boy,  president  of 
the  Sanhedrin  or  Supreme  Court  of  the 
Jews,  in  the  year  30  B.  C.  Hillel 's  "Judge 
not  thy  neighbor  unless  thou  hast  been  in  his 
place,"  reminds  us  of  ''judge  not  that  ye  be 
not  judged."  Hillel 's,  "Whoso  would  make 
his  name  great  shall  lose  it,"  is  but  an  earlier 
equivalent  of  Jesus'  saying,  ""Whosoever 
would  save  his  life  shall  lose  it."  His  "Bless 
them  that  curse  you,"  had  its  predecessor  in 
80 


THE    TEMPTATION    OF    JESUS 

"Revile  not  wlien  reviled,"  and  the  golden 
rule,  as  enunciated  by  Jesus,  was  exactly  the 
same  as  expressed  by  Hillel.  But  Jesus  ad- 
vanced upon  the  ethics  of  Hillel  by  perceiv- 
ing that  the  spirit  or  motive  behind  an  act 
is  what  gives  it  moral  worth.  Thus  it  was 
reserved  for  Jesus  to  take  this  morality  of 
the  spirit  out  of  the  mass  of  Jewish  legalism 
where  Hillel  had  left  it,  and  make  it  the  cor- 
ner-stone of  his  contribution  to  Judaism. 

Besides  the  education  which  Jesus  received 
from  his  mother  at  home  and  from  the  ' '  haz- 
zan"  at  the  synagogue,  he  was  further  in- 
structed in  the  trade  of  the  carpenter.  Here 
again  the  Talmud  expounds  the  ancient  Law 
of  Deuteronomy,  '^He  that  teacheth  not  his 
son  a  trade  is  as  bad  as  he  that  teacheth  him 
to  be  a  thief."  As  Paul  followed  the  trade 
of  tent-making,  so  Jesus  adopted  the  carpen- 
ter trade,  working  in  his  father's  shop,  '*a 
maker  of  ploughs  and  ox-yokes, ' '  says  one  of 
the  uncanonical  gospels.  Nor  is  it  a  far- 
fetched hypothesis  but  an  inference,  war- 
ranted by  modern  knowledge  of  the  relation 
of  manual  training  to  character,  to  believe 
that  the  trade  Jesus  adopted  was  an  impor- 
81 


THE    LIFE    OF    JESUS 

tant  factor  in  his  moral  education,  deepening 
his  moral  nature  and  giving  added  strength 
to  those  qualities  of  sincerity,  and  truthful- 
ness, accuracy  of  thought  and  statement  that 
are  indirectly  related  to  manual  training. 

Again,  account  must  be  taken  of  Jesus '  res- 
idence at  Capernaum,  when  considering  the 
sources  and  content  of  his  education,  for  this 
town  was  situated  within  easy  walking  dis- 
tance of  Nazareth,  at  the  northeast  corner  of 
the  Lake  of  Tiberias,  and  on  the  commercial 
highway  leading  from  Syria  to  the  Mediter- 
ranean and  Egypt.  Caravans  from  Asia 
Minor  and  even  from  Greece  and  Eome 
passed  through  Capernaum  on  their  way  to 
Arabia  and  the  far  East.  A  custom-house 
was  situated  there  and  a  Roman  garrison. 
There,  too,  it  was  that  the  public  ministry 
of  Jesus  began,  for  he  chose  this  nearest 
place  to  his  home  city  as  the  headquarters 
for  his  missionary  activity,  leaving  it  in  the 
morning  and  returning  at  night,  or,  at  the 
close  of  each  journey  to  a  more  distant  town, 
returning  eventually  to  Capernaum.  During 
his  residence  at  this  commercial  thorough- 
fare Jesus  must  have  met  Syrians,  Greeks, 
82 


THE    TEMPTATION    OF    JESUS 

Persians,  people  of  various  lands,  customs 
and  religions.  Such  an  experience  would 
tend  to  develop  in  him  catholicity  and  a 
keener  sense  of  the  universality  of  moral  and 
religious  sentiments,  and  of  God  as  the 
Father,  not  of  the  Jews  only,  but  of  all  man- 
kind. Who  knows  but  that  the  central  idea 
in  the  parable  of  the  Good  Samaritan  may 
not  be  traced  to  the  experience  and  obser- 
vation in  cosmopolitan  Capernaum. 

Finally,  Nature  must  be  counted  among 
the  sources  of  Jesus'  education,  witness  what 
we  read  in  parable  and  in  precept  of  the 
lilies  and  the  cornfields,  the  ravens  and  the 
sparrows,  the  mountains  and  the  sea. 

In  the  absence  of  positive,  direct  informa- 
tion concerning  the  childhood  and  youth  of 
Jesus,  it  is  not  strange  that  a  number  of 
theories  should  have  originated  as  to  his 
whereabouts  and  activities  during  this  pe- 
riod. But  not  one  of  these  theories,  locat- 
ing him  in  India,  or  in  Egypt,  or  elsewhere 
outside  of  Palestine,  has  any  valid  evidence 
in  its  support.  What  the  late  Max  Miiller 
said,  thirty  years  ago,  is  still  true,  that  * '  not 
only  are  the  historical  channels"  for  relat- 
83 


THE    LIFE    OF    JESUS 

ing  Jesus  with  any  country  other  than  Pal- 
estine ''altogether  wanting,"  but  there  is 
also  "no  allusion"  to  him  in  any  Buddhistic 
or  Hindu  literature  of  his  time.* 

The  first  public  appearance  of  Jesus  was 
as  a  young  man,  not  yet  thirty  years  of  age, 
on  the  banks  of  the  Jordan,  where  John  the 
Baptist  was  conducting  a  ceremony  sym- 
bolical of  moral  regeneration  and  the  re- 
mission of  sins.  A  baptism  of  repentance 
it  was,  directly  related  to  the  most  vital  be- 
lief of  that  time,  the  speedy  coming  of  the 
Kingdom  of  Heaven  on  earth,  in  which  none 
but  the  penitent  and  reformed  could  dwell. 
According  to  all  three  of  the  Synoptic  Gos- 
pels, Jesus  was  baptized  by  John,  the  cere- 
mony marking  his  assumption  of  a  Messi- 
anic office  followed  by  a  temptation.  To  this 
acceptance  of  the  Messianic  office  and  the 
particular  interpretation  Jesus  put  upon  it 
we  shall  return  in  a  later  chapter. 

"Immediately,"  says  the  earliest  of  the 
evangelists,  "the  spirit  driveth  him  into  the 
wilderness.  And  he  was  there  forty  days, 
tempted  of  Satan,  and  was  with  the  wild 

^"Essays,"  2d  Series,  chap.  IV. 

84 


THE    TEMPTATION    OF    JESUS 

beasts  (the  guise  in  which  demons  were  be- 
lieved to  appear),  and  angels  ministered 
unto  him."  Such  is  the  concise  and  simple 
account  as  given  in  the  gospel  of  Mark. 
When  we  turn  to  the  records  of  Matthew 
and  Luke  we  observe  what  may  be  seen  many- 
times  when  the  same  incident  has  been  re- 
ported by  all  three,  namely  that  it  grows 
with  the  telling  as  we  pass  from  the  earlier 
to  the  later  documents,  showing  that  in  the 
process  of  transmission  there  occurred  a 
heightening  of  the  marvellous  element  in  the 
story.  Thus  the  earliest  account  is  the  sim- 
plest and  shortest,  consisting  of  but  two 
verses,  whereas  Matthew's  has  eleven  verses 
and  Luke 's  fourteen,  both  Matthew  and  Luke 
amplifying  Mark's  simple  narrative,  and 
Luke  introducing  details  not  found  in  Mat- 
thew's account.  This  characteristic  of  the 
Synoptics,  when  all  three  tell  the  same  story, 
is  met  with  again  and  again,  conspicuously 
in  the  ''healing"  narratives,  as  we  shall  see 
in  the  next  lecture. 

The  Fourth  Gospel  contains  no  record  of 
a  temptation  of  Jesus,  for  the  reason  that 
such  would  have  been  incompatible  with  the 
85 


THE    LIFE    OF    JESUS 

author's  view  of  Jesus  as  tlie  ''Logos"  or 
''Word,"  the  "only  begotten  of  the  Father 
who  dwelt  among  us,  full  of  grace  and 
truth."  Such  a  one  would  of  necessity  be 
wholly  above  the  reach  of  temptation.  Turn- 
ing to  the  story  as  told  by  Matthew  and  Luke, 
we  read  that  Jesus  fasted  in  the  wilderness 
forty  days,  and,  when  almost  overpowered 
by  the  severe  ordeal,  Satan  came  to  him,  bid- 
ding him  appease  the  pangs  of  hunger  by 
converting  the  desert-stones  into  bread.  But 
Jesus  repudiates  the  suggestion,  quoting 
from  the  eighth  chapter  of  the  Book  of  Deu- 
teronomy, "Man  shall  not  live  by  bread 
alone,  but  by  every  word  that  proceedeth 
out  of  the  mouth  of  God."  Whereupon  the 
undaunted  Satan  suggests  that  Jesus,  if  he 
be  indeed  the  Son  of  God,  throw  himself 
down  from  a  pinnacle  of  the  temple  and  see 
whether  or  not  God  will  guard  and  save  him. 
Again  Satan  is  rebuffed,  Jesus  quoting  from 
the  sixth  chapter  of  the  book  of  Deuteron- 
omy, "Thou  shalt  not  tempt  the  Lord  thy 
God."  Defeated  a  second  time  in  the  ful- 
fillment of  his  evil  designs,  the  Tempter  now 
proffers  Jesus  all  the  kingdoms  of  the  world 
86 


THE    TEMPTATION    OF    JESUS 

wLich  are  at  his  disposal,  provided  he  will 
henceforth  worship  him.  For  the  third  time 
the  Tempter  is  rebuffed  and  this  time  ban- 
ished from  the  presence  of  Jesus  with  the 
words:  "Get  thee  hence,  Satan;  for  it  is 
written  (in  the  sixth  chapter  of  Deuteron- 
omy) thou  shalt  worship  the  Lord  thy  God, 
and  Him  only  shalt  thou  serve."  And  the 
narrative  concludes  with  the  statement  that 
''angels  came  and  ministered  unto  him" — 
the  symbol  of  Divine  approval. 

Such  is  the  story  as  we  find  it,  in  the  Gos- 
pels according  to  Matthew  and  Luke.  A 
weird,  fanciful  story  it  is,  sketched  with  fine 
imaginative  powder  and  artistic  skill ;  a  story 
that  testifies  both  to  the  myth-making  fer- 
tility of  the  writers  and  to  the  spiritual 
greatness  of  Jesus,  for  of  no  average,  ordi- 
nary man  would  such  a  story  have  been  told. 
Jesus  was  so  great  as  to  have  persuaded 
his  contemporaries  that  he  was  born  in  an 
exceptional  way  and  that  he  achieved  an  un- 
paralleled triumph  over  Satan.  Whatever 
historical  basis  the  story  may  have  had,  the 
legendary  elements  were  supplied  from  Old 
Testament  narratives  of  the  two  great  pre- 
7  87 


THE    LIFE    OF    JESUS 

decessors  of  Jesus,  Moses  and  Elijah,  rep- 
resenting the  Law  and  the  Prophets  respec- 
tively. Of  them  both  it  has  been  recorded 
that  they  fasted  forty  days  in  the  wilder- 
ness,^ while  of  Israel  in  the  wilderness  it 
was  written  that  for  forty  years  they  lived 
not  by  bread,  but  by  food  from  Heaven.^ 

Additional  material  for  the  shaping  of  the 
temptation  narratives  was  furnished  by  a 
number  of  current  traditions.  One  of  these 
was  to  the  effect  that  Jesus  was  often  hun- 
gry, nor  would  he  hesitate,  even  on  the  Sab- 
bath day,  to  pluck  the  ears  of  corn  as  he 
walked  through  the  corn  fields.^  Another, 
and  long  established  tradition  among  the 
Jews,  was  that  Messiah  would  conquer 
Satan.  The  biographers  of  Jesus  believed 
he  was  the  Messiah,  hence  they  drew  the 
logical  inference  that  Jesus  had  conquered 
Satan.  Again,  there  was  a  tradition  that 
associated  with  Jesus  the  words,  ''Get  thee 
behind  me,  Satan."  The  prevalence  of  the 
passion  among  certain  people  for  "signs" 

^  Exod.  24  :  18 ;   I  Kings  19  :  8. 

'  Exod.   16  :  35. 

^Matt.    21  :  18;    12  :  1,    passim. 


THE    TEMPTATION    OF    JESUS 

whereby  Jesus  should  demonstrate  his  Mes- 
siahship,  this,  too,  must  be  counted  among 
the  traditions  that  contributed  to  the  forma- 
tion of  the  temptation  legend.  In  seeking 
the  historical  facts  of  which  this  legend  is 
the  embellishment  we  have  to  remember  that 
the  experience  related  of  Jesus  had  neither 
an  eye-witness  nor  an  ear-witness.  No  one 
was  present  to  record  what  transpired.  If, 
then,  the  story  of  the  temptation  has  more 
than  a  Messianic  source,  it  originated  not 
only  out  of  the  belief  that  as  Messiah  Jesus 
had  triumphed  over  Satan,  but  also  out  of 
an  actual  experience  of  spiritual  struggle 
which,  at  a  later  day,  he  confided  to  his  dis- 
ciples, describing  it  in  allegorical  terms, 
easily  misunderstood  by  confessedly  dull 
minds.  Hence,  the  story  of  the  temptation 
is  that  of  an  agonizing  spiritual  experience 
translated  into  a  series  of  grotesque  inci- 
dents, an  allegory  converted  into  impossible 
history. 

Certainly  such  an  interpretation  of  what 
we  read  in  the  Synoptics  is  not  at  all  un- 
warranted, witness  the  story  of  the  cursing 
of  the  fig  tree,  which  the  higher  criticism  has 
89 


THE    LIFE    OF    JESUS 

shown  was  originally  a  parable,  slowly  trans- 
formed in  the  course  of  successive  oral 
transmissions  into  an  alleged  fact.^ 

The  story  of  the  temptation,  we  may  well 
believe,  is  not  a  mere  myth  made  solely  from 
Messianic  speculation,  but  rather  a  legend, 
distinguished  from  a  myth  in  that  it  has  a 
basis  in  reality.  For  a  legend  is  an  historical 
fact  embellished  with  imaginary  details. 
What,  then,  is  the  nucleus  of  truth  in  this 
legend?  Jesus'  baptism  was  to  him  a  sym- 
bol of  self-sanctification.  It  was  emblematic 
of  a  purification  of  the  innermost  springs  of 
action.  It  meant  a  devout  self-dedication  to 
the  life  of  service.  And  the  occasion  for 
immediate  entrance  upon  that  life  seems  to 
have  been  furnished  by  the  imprisonment  of 
the  Baptist  (for  having  dared  to  rebuke  the 
immoral  King  Herod).  Yet  the  call  to  the 
ministry  had  already  been  heard  and  it 
would  therefore  be  absurd  to  believe  that  but 
for  this  sudden  termination  of  John's  pro- 
phetic work,  Jesus  would  not  have  become  a 
public  teacher.  For  him  the  baptism  was  a 
kind  of  ordination  to  the  ministry,  to  be  en- 

^Mark   11  :  12;    Matt.   21.     Compare  Luke   13  :  6-9. 
90 


THE    TEMPTATION    OF    JESUS 

tered  seriously  and  solemnly  as  a  particu- 
larly hallowed  vocation.  But  at  the  very 
threshold  he  halts,  hesitates,  doubts,  and 
forthwith  retires  to  a  solitary  place  for 
meditation,  reflection,  self-collecting  and 
deeper  consideration  of  the  momentous  is- 
sues which  the  assumption  of  the  role  of  min- 
ister involves. 

So  was  it  with  the  Apostle  Paul  after  his 
revolutionizing  experience  on  the  way  to 
Damascus.  He  tells  us  in  the  very  first  of 
his  Epistles,  the  one  written  to  the  Gala- 
tians,  that  when  he  had  found  himself  con- 
verted from  a  persecutor  to  a  champion  of 
the  Christ,  he  communed  with  not  a  single 
human  soul,  not  even  with  the  Apostles  in 
Jerusalem,  but  went  straightway  into  the 
wilderness  beyond  Damascus.  What  for?  To 
reflect  upon  all  that  had  transpired  since  his 
participation  in  the  persecution  of  Stephen, 
to  clarify  and  formulate  new  convictions,  to 
dispel  lingering  doubts,  to  shape  the  new 
message  of  which  he  was  to  be  the  apostle, 
to  decide  upon  the  next  step  in  his  career. 

What  man  is  there  who  does  not,  before 
launching  some  great  enterprise  upon  which 
91 


THE    LIFE    OF    JESUS 

his  whole  destiny  depends,  pause  and  retire 
to  some  solitary  place  for  self-scrutiny  and 
dispassionate  consideration  of  all  that  his 
enterprise  involves?  And  only  when  he  has 
thus  given  himself  to  solitude  and  reflection 
does  he  go  forth  and  set  his  face  towards 
the  goal  of  his  desire. 

I  take  it  that  it  was  just  such  a  lonely  ex- 
perience, marked  by  wrestlings  of  spirit, 
which  Jesus  underwent  and  which  the  au- 
thors of  the  Synoptic  Gospels  presented  in 
objective  spectacular  form  with  the  aid  of 
contemporary  demonology  and  angelology. 
Recall,  for  a  moment,  the  conditions  obtain- 
ing at  the  time  Jesus  resolved  to  enter  the 
ministry,  the  obstacles  and  dangers  that 
would  beset  him  from  the  very  start.  Fore- 
most in  the  religious  field  were  the  Pharisees 
and  the  Sadducees,  the  two  leading  parties  in 
the  Judaism  of  that  time.  While  it  is  true 
that  the  Pharisees,  as  a  class,  represented  the 
best  element  in  the  community  and  that 
Jesus  himself,  had  he  identified  himself  with 
any  party,  would  have  belonged  to  the  Phari- 
sees, yet  there  were  groups  of  them  con- 
spicuous for  their  mechanical  conception  of 
92 


THE    TEMPTATION    OF    JESUS 

religion,  their  formalism  and  hypocrisy, 
their  scepticism  and  delight  in  hair-splitting 
distinctions  touching  precepts  of  the  law. 
Jesus,  representing  a  morality  of  the  spirit, 
would  of  necessity  be  brought  into  conflict 
with  these  Pharisees. 

The  Sadducees,  on  the  other  hand,  were 
the  custodians  of  the  ceremonial  side  of  re- 
ligion; they  were  identified  with  the  temple 
services  as  were  the  Pharisees  with  the  syna- 
gogue education.  They  represented  the  aris- 
tocracy of  wealth  as  did  the  Pharisees  the 
aristocracy  of  intellect.  Wealthy,  conserva- 
tive, exclusive,  they  had  opinions  certain  to 
antagonize  a  democratic,  progressive  thinker 
like  Jesus. 

Over  against  those  two  parties  stood  the 
masses,  groaning  under  the  yoke  of  Roman 
oppression  and  praying  for  deliverance  by 
any  hand  at  any  price,  whether  by  foul  means 
or  by  fair.  Here  was  a  spirit  to  be  curbed, 
tamed,  transformed — a  Herculean  task  for 
even  the  most  optimistic  of  moral  reformers. 
More  serious  perhaps  than  any  of  these  ob- 
stacles was  the  prevailing  popular  concep- 
tion of  the  Messiah,  so  different  from  that 
93 


THE    LIFE    OF    JESUS 

which  Jesus  entertained.  The  populace 
looked  for  a  political,  industrial  and  social 
redeemer;  their  Messiah  was  a  person  equal 
to  reinstating  the  prosperity  and  peace,  the 
pomp  and  splendor  of  David's  day.  Jesus, 
on  the  other  hand,  had  a  totally  different 
conception  of  the  office  and  the  title.  To 
him  it  was  synonymous  with  the  suffering 
servant  of  Yahweh,  described  by  the  second 
Isaiah.^  The  Messiah's  function  in  Jesus' 
thought  was  ethical  and  spiritual,  not  po- 
litical and  temporal.  Here,  then,  in  this  re- 
cognized radical  difference  between  his  own 
and  the  popular  conception  of  the  Messiah, 
Jesus  must  have  seen  an  obstacle  second  per- 
haps to  none.  Could  he,  as  a  moral  and 
spiritual  reformer,  hope  to  succeed  in  the 
face  of  certain  collision  with  the  tw^o  lead- 
ing traditional  parties,  and  with  the  pros- 
pect of  certain  opposition  from  the  people 
who  espoused  traditional  Messianic  expecta- 
tions and  who  would  look  to  him  for  their 
fulfillment?  On  the  other  hand,  offsetting 
the  consciousness  of  these  obstacles,  there 
was  the  obvious  pressing  need  of  moral  and 

'  Isaiah  53  and  61. 

94 


THE    TEMPTATION    OF    JESUS 

spiritual  reform  and  the  still,  small  voice  in 
his  own  heart  bidding  him  throw  himself  into 
the  need  of  the  hour,  let  the  issue  be  what 
it  may.  Then,  too,  there  was  the  fact  of 
John's  imprisonment  and  the  consequent 
need  of  some  other  prophetic  soul  to  continue 
his  mission  and  bring  it  to  completion.  No 
one  there  was  but  Jesus  to  meet  that  need. 
Would  he  allow  fear,  misgiving,  doubt,  to 
conquer  him?  Would  he  yield  to  the  clainis 
of  safety,  ease,  security,  self-gratification  in 
the  presence  of  dangers  and  seemingly  in- 
surmountable difficulties?  Such,  I  take  it, 
was  the  temptation  of  Jesus,  the  testing  to 
which  his  soul  was  put.  To  be  tempted  is 
to  be  tested.  The  railroad  bridge  is  thrice 
tempted  to  give  way  before  a  passenger 
train  can  cross  it.  The  boiler  in  the  engine 
is  tempted  to  burst  before  it  is  relied  upon 
to  do  its  work.  So  the  moral  worth  of  a 
human  being  must  be  tested,  tried,  tempted 
to  break  down  before  Satanic  suggestions  and 
devices;  only  then  can  it  be  relied  upon  to 
be  true  to  its  calling. 

Jesus,  in  the  first  flush  of  enthusiasm  over 
a  great  opportunity  and  a  mighty  task,  dedi- 
95 


THE    LIFE    OF    JESUS 

cates  himself  to  its  fulfillment.  Then  comes 
the  moment  of  reaction,  of  hesitation  and 
misgiving,  of  seclusion  and  sober  reflection. 
He  is  torn  between  the  vision  of  limitless 
possibilities  for  service  and  the  conscious- 
ness of  divers  obstacles  in  the  path  of  its 
realization.  He  struggles  with  paralyzing 
doubt  and  self-distrust.  He  stands  at  the 
parting  of  the  ways,  one  pointing  to  an  Eden 
of  ease  and  security,  the  other  to  a  Geth- 
semane  of  ineffable  anguish  and  the  annihi- 
lation of  his  most  cherished  hope.  Tempted, 
he  was,  by  ignoble  fear,  by  lurking  moral 
weakness,  by  cowardly  shrinking,  by  the  self- 
same Satan  that  under  various  guises  has 
confronted,  and  as  vainly  beguiled,  the  mas- 
ter-spirits of  humanity,  the  consecrated 
truth-seekers  and  reformers  of  history. 
Theodore  Parker  met  him  when  deciding  on 
allegiance  to  freedom  at  any  price,  as 
against  comfortable  continuance  in  denom- 
inational slavery.  Arthur  Hallam  met  him 
in  the  field  of  scepticism  and  vanquished  him 
there  by  bold  and  fearless  allegiance  to  the 
spirit  of  truth.  Hence  his  dearest  friend 
could  exultingly  sing: 
96 


THE    TEMPTATION    OF    JESUS 

He  fought  his  doubts  and  gathered  strength, 
He  would  not  make  his  judgment  blind, 
He  faced  the  spectres  of  the  mind, 
And  laid  them :     Thus  he  came,  at  length 
To  find  a  stronger  faith  his  own. 

Lowell  warned  us  against  the  arch-demon 
as  tempting  to  irresolution,  indecision,  inac- 
tion. 

Once  to  every  man  and  nation  comes  the  moment  to  de- 
cide 

In  the  strife '  twixt  truth  and  falsehood,  for  the  good  or 
evil  side. 

Some  gi-eat  cause,  God's  new  Messiah,  offers  each  the 
bloom  or  blight. 

And  the  choice  goes  by  forever  'twixt  that  darkness 
and  that  light. 

The  three  temptations  of  the  Synoptic  le- 
gend lend  themselves  quite  readily  to  ethical 
interpretation.  To  ''live  by  bread  alone" 
was,  for  Jesus,  to  renounce  the  higher  needs 
of  humanity,  to  ignore  its  hunger  for  truth 
and  purity.  He  who  would  engage  in  the 
work  of  saving  humanity  must  have  an  eye 
to  ultimate  values  however  much  engrossed 
in  endeavors  after  material  good. 

To  ''worship"  the  "devil"  who  promises 
"power"  and  "glory"  and  "all  the  king- 
97 


THE    LIFE    OF    JESUS 

doms  of  the  world,"  to  succumb  to  the  blan- 
dishments of  Mammon,  this  was,  for  Jesus, 
to  ignore  the  invisible  lure  of  that  inner  life 
of  the  spirit  which  alone  guarantees  true 
and  imperishable  wealth  and  without  which 
no  earthly  riches  can  ever  permanently 
satisfy. 

Contemporary  with  Jesus  there  lived  the 
emperor  Tiberius,  the  undisputed,  deified, 
acknowledged  ruler  of  the  civilized  world, 
possessor  of  practically  unlimited  wealth, 
controller  of  all  necessary  resources  for  the 
gratifying  of  his  desires.  Yet  his  biogra- 
pher, Pliny,  called  him  ''the  gloomiest  of 
men,"  because  he  had  discovered  that 
earth's  richest  gifts  are  but  fairy  gold  and 
turn  to  dross  if  the  sacred  claims  of  the 
moral  ideal  are  disowned.  All  that  colossal 
magnificence  in  which  he  lived  was  no  more 
able  to  sustain  him  in  his  place  than  is  the 
sand-heap  of  the  child  to  stay  the  sweep  of 
the  Atlantic  tide.  Were  this  world  a  perfect 
chrysolite,  and  that  gem  ours,  it  would  not 
console  us  for  the  moment  in  our  experience 
when  we  were  weighed  in  the  scales  of  char- 
acter and  found  wanting. 
98 


THE    TEMPTATION    OF    JESUS 

To  ''tempt  the  Lord  thy  God,"  to  fly  in  the 
face  of  providence,  to  spurn  the  fixed  laws 
of  the  universe,  was,  for  Jesus,  no  mode  in 
which  to  manifest  divine  sonship.  If  it  be 
granted  that  the  temple  "is  symbolical  of 
conservatism,  of  allegiance  to  the  old  dispen- 
sation, the  law  of  Moses,"  as  contrasted 
with  concern  for  progress  and  devotion  to 
a  higher  law,  then  tliis  third  temptation  of 
Jesus  might  be  construed  as  a  testing  of  his 
loyalty  to  the  deeper  morality  for  which  he 
stood  and  also  of  his  trust  in  its  power  to 
prepare  men  for  entrance  into  the  coming 
kingdom  of  heaven  on  earth. 

Such,  I  take  it,  were  the  real  temptations 
to  which  Jesus  was  subjected.  They  were 
conquered  by  the  counter-appeal  of  those 
moral  principles  which  had  been  instilled 
into  him  as  a  child.  His  incisive  "get  thee 
behind  me  Satan"  bears  witness  to  his  pro- 
found confidence  in  the  power  of  an  ethicized 
will.  Eeading  the  temptation  narratives 
"with  free  reason  and  fluent  fancy"  we  ap- 
preciate their  innermost  meaning  and,  in- 
stead of  construing  them  as  prosaic  annals 
serviceable  for  dogmatic  purposes,  we  see  in 
99 


THE    LIFE    OF    JESUS 

tliem  beautiful  poems  pervaded  with  the  rev- 
erence and  love  of  those  who  sought  to  de- 
scribe the  experiences  through  which  he 
passed  in  the  attainment  of  complete  self- 
mastery  and  perfect  consecration  to  his  call- 
ing. 

So  true  is  this  story  of  the  temptation 
to  universal  human  nature  that  we  find  it 
paralleled  in  the  biographies  of  other  great 
religious  teachers,  notably  in  those  of  the 
Buddha  and  Zoroaster.  In  the  Avesta,  the 
Zoroastrian  Bible,  we  read  that  Ahriman, 
the  Satan  of  the  religion,  besought  its 
founder  to  abjure  his  faith  and  thereby  se- 
cure the  great  reward  which  it  is  in  the 
power  of  the  Evil  One  to  bestow.  In  re- 
sisting his  enticements  Zoroaster  quoted  a 
passage  of  scripture  held  in  highest  esteem 
among  his  followers.  In  the  Avestan  book 
called  the  Vendidad,  which  corresponds  to 
Leviticus  in  the  Old  Testament,  the  story  of 
Zoroaster's  temptation  is  recorded.  Let  me 
quote  the  cardinal  sentences  of  the  narra- 
tive: *'From  the  regions  of  hell  rushed 
forth  Ahriman,  the  deadly,  the  evil  One. 
But  Zoroaster  chanted,  *  The  will  of  the  Lord 
100 


THE    TEMPTATION    OF    JESUS 

is  the  law  of  holiness,  riches  shall  be  given 
to  him  who  works  according  to  the  will  of 
Mazda  the  Lord.'  The  Demon  dismayed 
rushed  away  saying:  *I  see  no  way  to  de- 
feat him,  so  great  is  the  glory  of  the  holy 
Zoroaster.'  Again  came  the  guileful  One, 
the  evil  One,  saying,  '0,  holy  Zoroaster,  re- 
nounce the  good  religion  of  Mazda  the  Lord 
and  thou  shalt  gain  such  reward  as  King 
Zohek  gained.'  Zoroaster  said:  'Never  will 
I  renounce  the  good  law  of  Mazda,  though 
my  body,  my  life  and  my  senses  should  burst. 
With  the  holy  Word  shall  I  be  victor,  with 
that  Word  shall  I  expel  thee.'  " 

In  the  Pitakas,  the  sacred  scriptures  of 
the  Buddhists,  we  read  that  Gotama  was 
thrice  tempted  before  he  attained  Buddha- 
hood.  When  resolved  to  go  forth  from  his 
home  in  search  of  ''the  way  of  salvation," 
he  was  met  by  "Mara  the  Evil  One," 
who  besought  him  to  renounce  his  purpose, 
promising  him  "sovereignty  over  the  four 
continents  and  the  two  thousand  adjacent 
isles."  But  "the  Blessed  One"  said:  "It 
is  not  sovereignty  that  I  seek;  I  desire  to 
become  a  Buddha  and  make  the  whole  world 
101 


THE    LIFE    OF    JESUS 

glad."  Having  dedicated  himself  to  the 
search  for  saving  truth,  and  believing  in 
common  with  his  contemporaries  that  fast- 
ing and  physical  austerities  promote  mental 
insight,  Gotama  gave  himself  over  to  ascetic 
practices.  And  when,  at  length,  he  had  been 
brought  close  to  death  from  sheer  starva- 
tion, Mara  came  a  second  time,  saying: 
''What  good  can  come  from  this  self-denial; 
deign  to  live  and  then  wilt  thou  be  able  to 
do  good  works."  Gotama  replied:  "Death 
in  battle  is  better  than  to  live  defeated." 
Finally  the  long  sought  enlightment  came. 
Seated  under  a  lotus  tree  (since  known  as 
the  "Bodlii"  tree),  the  solution  of  the  prob- 
lem upon  which  he  had  been  engaged  for  six 
years  came  to  him.  And  Mara  also  came, 
hoping  to  defeat  the  Buddha  in  his  hour  of 
triumph.  Mara's  demons,  we  are  told,  ''at- 
tacked the  Blessed  One,"  but  "their  arrows 
turned  into  fragrant  flowers."  Then  the 
arch-demon  dispatched  his  three  daughters. 
Lust,  Folly  and  Envy,  to  entice  Gotama  back 
to  the  worldly  life  by  sensuous  solicitations, 
by  appeals  to  vain  and  shallow  satisfactions. 
But  the  Buddha  "remained  unresponsive 
102 


THE    TEMPTATION    OF    JESUS 

and  was  victorious."  Tlien  Mara  said:  '*I 
find  no  sin  in  liim,  and  now  is  he  indeed  be- 
yond my  power." 

Among  the  ancient  Greeks  a  legend  ob- 
tained concerning  the  temptation  of  Hercu- 
les. According  to  Xenophon,  Hercules  went 
forth  into  a  solitary  place  perplexed  as  to 
which  of  two  paths  he  should  pursue.  Two 
stately  female  figures  waited  upon  him ;  the 
one,  of  modest  demeanor  and  clad  in  white 
robes;  the  other,  with  complexion  assisted 
by  art,  seemed  fairer  and  more  engaging. 
The  former  was  Virtue,  bidding  him  choose 
the  path  of  self-denial  and  service ;  the  latter 
was  Vice,  pointing  the  way  to  selfishness  and 
sin  and  promising  happiness. 

In  these  parallels  to  the  Gospel  narrative — 
and  they  might  easily  be  multiplied  by  ref- 
erence to  the  sacred  scriptures  of  other  re- 
ligions— we  see  under  varying  forms  an  epi- 
tome of  the  spiritual  experience  of  universal 
Man.  All  these  legends  admit  of  application 
to  our  personal  life.  'Tis  only  as  we  have 
a  decisive  ''Get  thee  behind  me  Satan"  in 
our  moral  vocabulary  that  we  shall  hear  the 
confession,  ''now  is  he  indeed  beyond  my 
8  103 


THE    LIFE    OF    JESUS 

power,"  and  taste  both  "the  peace  that 
passeth  understanding"  and  the  joy  which 
is  more  than  happiness. 

Each  of  the  temptations  ascribed  to  Jesus 
by  the  writers  of  the  first  and  third  Gospels 
is  the  type  of  a  universal  experience.  What 
man  is  there  who  has  not  at  some  time  been 
confronted  by  that  Satan,  Selfishness,  in  one 
or  another  of  its  many  forms,  tempted  to 
live  by  bread  alone,  unmindful  of  the  claims 
of  the  starving  spirit ;  or  to  risk  his  life  pre- 
sumptuously, blind  to  the  fact  that  his  life  is 
not  his  own  to  do  with  as  he  will ;  or  to  fall 
down  in  worship  before  unspiritual  gods,  ig- 
noring the  only  fealty  which  saves  the  soul? 

To  the  rich,  Satan  appears  in  the  form  of 
haughtiness,  false  pride,  vanity  and  vulgar 
display;  to  the  well-to-do,  in  the  shape  of 
envy  and  apeing  of  the  rich;  to  the  poor,  in 
the  guise  of  an  undivine  discontent,  born  of 
ignorance  of  actual  facts,  and  breeding  senti- 
ments anarchic  and  revolutionary. 

To  severe  and  lonely  struggle  with  the 

power  of  sin  must  every  human  being  be 

called,  for  on  no  easier  terms  can  the  natural 

man  develop  into  the  spiritual  and  that  which 

104 


THE    TEMPTATION    OF    JESUS 

is  essentially  human  in  lis  be  assured  of  its 
alliance  to  what  is  divine.  So  thought  Pope 
Innocent  XII,  as  Browning  portrayed  him 
in  ''The  Ring  and  the  Book."  Hear  his 
thrilling  appeal: 

Why  comes  temptation  but  for  man  to  meet 
And  master  and  make  crouch  beneath  his  foot, 
And  so  be  pedestaled  in  triumph? 


Lead  such  temptations  by  the  head  and  hair. 
Reluctant  dragons,  up  to  who  dares  fight 
That  so  he  may  do  battle  and  have  praise ! 

Picture  a  world  without  temptation  or 
trial,  a  world  in  which  no  struggle  ever  tries 
the  conscience,  no  misfortune  ever  ruffles  the 
breast,  no  conflict  ever  tests  the  soul.  In 
such  a  world  there  could  be  innocence  in- 
deed, but  not  character;  automata,  but  not 
free  moral  agents.  Hence,  the  absurdity  of 
Huxley's  indictment  of  the  universe  on  the 
ground  that  moral  evil  in  the  form  of  tempta- 
tion and  spiritual  conflict  is  part  of  the  total 
scheme  of  things.  There  are  but  two  known 
ways  in  which  temptation  could  have  been 
prevented  in  the  ordering  of  the  cosmos  and 
105 


THE    LIFE    OF    JESUS 

neither  of  these  would  be  desirable.  Either 
we  might  have  been  constructed  as  auto- 
mata, incapable  of  doing  wrong;  or  we  might 
be  saved  from  temptation  by  miraculous  in- 
tervention each  time  it  crossed  our  path. 
Huxley,  in  his  haste,  declared  he  would  will- 
ingly become  a  moral  automaton  were  God 
to  offer  him  the  privilege.  But  would  it  be 
a  privilege  to  be  turned  from  tempted  men 
into  automatic  machines  ?  In  a  world  where 
character  is  the  supreme  desideratum  of  per- 
sonal life  would  it  be  a  mark  of  Divine 
beneficence  to  save  us  from  temptation?  On 
the  contrary,  the  prevention  of  moral  pain 
in  a  world  where  soul-development  is  the 
mainspring  of  life  would  be  an  impeachment 
of  the  goodness  of  its  Creator.  Nor  is  it 
within  the  scope  of  Omnipotence  to  bestow 
upon  us  character  as  an  outright  gift,  seeing 
that  temptation  and  conflict  are  inseparably 
bound  up  with  its  attainment,  and  that  char- 
acter is  actually  meaningless  except  as  a 
product  of  battle  with  temptation. 

Thus  we  have  no  alternative,  as  thought- 
ful, character-loving  souls,  but  to  accept  and 
welcome  the  part  that  spiritual  conflict  plays 
106 


THE    TEMPTATION    OF    JESUS 

in  our  life.  Such  was  the  Gospel  preached 
by  the  foremost  spiritual  teacher  of  our  time, 
the  most  virile  and  spiritually-awakening 
mind  in  English  poetry,  who  in  his  philoso- 
phy of  life,  as  expounded  in  ''Rabbi  Ben 
Ezra"  incorporated  the  lines: 

Poor  vaunt  of  life  indeed, 

Were  man  but  formed  to  feed 

On  joy,  to  solely  seek  and  find  and  feast: 

Such  feasting  ended,  then 

As  sure  an  end  to  men; 

Then,  welcome  each  rebuff 

That  turns  earth's  smoothness  rough. 

Each  sting  that  bids  nor  sit  nor  stand  but  go! 

Again  and  again  in  our  experience  will  we 
find  ourselves  driven  into  the  wilderness 
where  all  without  is  ''silent  as  the  Dead  Sea 
shore,"  but  all  within  turbulent  with  "the 
mid-strife  'twixt  heaven  and  hell,"  leaving 
us  "wasted  as  with  fasting  and  nigh  unto 
death."  But  if  in  that  hour  we  are  only 
true  to  the  spirit  which  says  ' '  thou  shalt  not 
live  by  bread  alone,"  if  we  "quietly  descend 
from  our  pinnacle  of  pride"  and  bend  no 
knee  to  "the  majesty  of  tinselled  wrong," 
107 


THE    LIFE    OF    JESUS 

but  drive  away  every  lure  of  guilt  by  alle- 
giance to  the  holiest  we  know,  then  will  the 
angels  of  self-respect  and  loyalty  come  unto 
us  and  minister  unto  us,  and  fill  us  with  a 
joy  and  peace  no  power  can  ever  take  away. 


IV 

MIRACLES  AND  THE  MINISTRY  OF  HEALING 

Every  thoughtful  reader  of  the  Synoptic 
Gospels  must  have  observed  that  Jesus  the 
healer  is  just  as  integral  a  part  of  the  rec- 
ord as  Jesus  the  teacher.  Even  the  most 
critically  sifted  sections  of  the  Gospels  leave 
us  the  portraiture  of  the  healing  Jesus.  No 
aspect  of  his  ministry  is  so  persistently  pres- 
ent in  the  Synoptics  as  that  of  his  curative 
influence  and  power.  Nor  do  any  other  nar- 
ratives evince  their  verity  more  conclusively 
than  those  in  which  his  gift  of  healing  ap- 
pears. It  is  attested  both  by  his  popularity 
as  a  healer  and  by  the  variety  of  theories 
offered  to  explain  his  success.^ 

According  to  the  earliest  of  the  Gospels 
(and  Mark  is  generally  so  considered,  though 
there  are  sections  of  Matthew  that  may  be 

*  See  Encyclopaedia  Biblica :    article   * '  Gospels. ' ' 

109 


THE    LIFE    OF    JESUS 

of  earlier  date),  within  eight  hours  of  the 
beginning  of  his  public  ministry  Jesus '  fame 
as  a  healer  had  spread  throughout  all  the 
region  round  about  Galilee,  so  that  at  sun- 
set he  finds  himself  surrounded  by  a  throng 
of  sufferers  pressing  forward  to  be  cured. 
The  next  day  the  crowd  at  a  Capernaum 
home,  where  Jesus  was  visiting,  is  so  great 
that  when  a  victim  of  palsy  is  brought  to 
be  healed  he  can  gain  entrance  only  through 
the  roof  of  the  one-story  house.  Then  fol- 
lows in  Mark's  narrative  the  report  of  a  suc- 
cession of  healings,  Jesus  curing  those  **  dis- 
eased" or  ''possessed  of  devils."  And  when 
we  turn  to  the  other  two  Gospels  the  record 
does  but  confirm  and  emphasize  his  popular- 
ity as  a  healer,  forcing  us  to  feel  that  what- 
ever our  view  of  the  results  achieved,  the 
reality  of  a  healing  ministry  cannot  be 
doubted.  And  when  we  review  the  theories 
broached  to  account  for  what  was  done,  we 
see  that  they  re-attest  the  healing  ministry. 
We  note  first  the  theory  of  the  immediate 
relatives  of  Jesus,  who  take  the  ground  that 
he  is  out  of  his  senses,  that  much  benevo- 
lence has  made  him  mad;  ''he  is  beside  him- 
110 


MINISTRY    OF    HEALING 

self, ' '  ^  they  say.  Next,  there  is  the  theory 
of  tlie  Pharisees  who  declare  he  is  in  league 
with  Beelzebub.2  Herod's  theory  is  that 
John  the  Baptist  had  miraculously  ascended 
from  Sheol  and  was  impersonated  in  this 
healer.^  A  multitude  of  beneficent  deeds 
must  have  been  done,  else  his  relatives  would 
not  have  imputed  incipient  insanity  to  Jesus. 
Healing  facts  there  were,  requiring  adequate 
explanation,  else  the  Pharisees  would  not 
have  proffered  their  interpretation  of  them. 
Herod's  theory  is  obviously  absurd,  but,  as 
Schmiedel  has  pointed  out,  the  very  absurd- 
ity of  it  witnesses  to  extraordinary  facts  that 
forced  their  way  into  the  palace  of  a  King.* 
Thus  the  healing  ministry  of  Jesus  is 
doubly  attested  and  at  the  same  time  ex- 
pressive of  a  sympathetic,  tender  concern  for 
those  physically  and  morally  sick.  Nor  is 
there  in  the  Gospels  any  healing  act  the 
genuineness  of  which  need  be  questioned. 
No  violation  of  known  law  is  involved  in 

^  Mark    3  :  21. 

^  Mark  3  :  22. 

»Mark  6  :  14-16. 

*  Encyclopsedia  Biblica:    article,  "Qoapels." 

Ill 


THE    LIFE    OF    JESUS 

any  of  the  reported  cures. ^  All  are  familiar 
to  medical  science  not  less  than  to  Christian 
Science,  Dowieism,  Emmanuelism  and  other 
kindred  occultisms.  To  the  student  of  physi- 
ological psychology  these  New  Testament 
cures  take  their  place  by  the  side  of  those 
achieved  at  Lourdes  and  Ste.  Anne  de 
Beaupre,  in  the  clinic  of  Charcot  and  in  that 
of  many  a  regular  medical  practitioner  com- 
petent to  treat  successfully  the  various  forms 
under  which  hysteria  appears  and  without 
ever  resorting  to  materia  medica. 

In  the  great  laboratories  of  Europe  and 
America  it  has  been  discovered  that  the 
range  of  nervous  cause  and  implication  in 
the  ills  to  which  we  are  susceptible  is  much 
wider  than  we  were  accustomed  to  suppose. 
It  has  been  found  that  nothing  is  more  para- 
lyzing than  a  hysterical  imagination  and  that 
the  range  of  functional  disturbance,  whether 
in  the  digestive,  circulatory  or  nervous  sj^s- 
tems,  is  practically  unlimited.  It  has  also 
been  discovered  that  the  seat  of  some  of  the 
most  baffling  diseases  is  in  the  imagination 

'Mark  1  :  23,  27,  30,  32;  2:5,  12;  3  :  1,  5;  5  :  1-16; 
7  :  26-29. 

112 


MINISTRY    OF    HEALING 

and  the  will  and  that  to  effect  a  cure  these 
must  be  directly  reached.  Hence,  the  rise 
of  the  ''neo-homeopathy,"  if  so  we  may  call 
it,  the  theory  that  ''like  cures  like,"  that 
whatever  has  a  nervous  cause  must  be  given 
a  nervous  cure.  Not  drugs,  but  a  nervous 
shock  or  thrill  must  be  administered.  Or  it 
may  be  that  some  incisive  word,  or  look,  or 
gesture  suffices  to  restore  the  normal  flow  of 
the  vital  currents. 

From  the  Talmud  we  learn  of  the  wide- 
spread prevalence,  during  the  first  century 
of  our  era,  of  nervous  diseases  and  of  lunacy 
in  all  its  degrees.  The  immediate  cause  was 
the  excitement  engendered  by  the  expecta- 
tion of  the  Messiah  who,  it  was  believed, 
would  appear  at  any  moment  to  usher  in  the 
Kingdom  of  Heaven  on  earth.  It  was  an  age 
of  signs  and  wonders,  of  soothsayings  and 
divinations.^  The  fires  of  Messianic  hope, 
after  smouldering  for  several  decades,  were 
once  more  fanned  into  a  flame.  People  were 
on  tip-toe  of  expectation,  a  condition  akin 
to  that  with  which  ''Millerism"  has  made  us 
familiar   and   attended   by    such    disorders, 

» II   Cor.    12  :  11,    12. 

113 


THE    LIFE    OF    JESUS 

physical  and  mental,  as  are  described  in  the 
Synoptics.  Dr.  Goddard,  a  distinguished 
graduate  of  Clark  University,  Worcester, 
Massachusetts,  after  two  years  of  study  de- 
voted exclusively  to  this  subject,  drew  up  a 
classified  list  of  modern  diseases  parallel  to 
those  of  ancient  Palestine  and  successfully 
treated  in  our  own  day  by  just  such  methods 
as  Jesus  employed. 

What  were  his  methods  1  In  the  main  they 
were  psychical.  He  speaks  to  the  patient, 
takes  him  by  the  hand,  or  puts  his  own  hand 
upon  him,  and,  with  decisive  tone,  commands 
the  evil  spirit  to  depart  from  the  sufferer. 
For,  like  his  Jewish  contemporaries,  Jesus 
believed  that  all  such  disorders  as  he  dealt 
with  were  caused  by  evil  spirits  obsessing 
the  patient,  and  that  exorcism  is  therefore 
the  only  cure.  The  science  of  medicine  in 
those  days  consisted  in  discovering  the  best 
method  of  exorcizing  the  demons.  Not  the 
best  educated  man,  but  the  most  devout,  was 
found  competent  to  heal.  The  more  spiritual 
the  personality  of  the  healer,  the  more  fit 
would  he  be  to  cast  out  evil  spirits.  If  these 
are  the  cause  of  sickness,  and  exorcism  is  the 
114 


MINISTRY    OF    HEALING 

cure,  the  most  sj^iritually  minded  man  will 
be  the  best  doctor. 

Rarely  did  Jesus  use  material  aids.  Our 
earliest  Gospel  records  but  two  instances. 
In  the  one  spittle  and  clay  were  employed  to 
cure  a  case  of  temporary  blindness;  in  the 
other  Jesus  put  his  fingers  into  the  ears  of 
a  man  to  cure  him  of  deafness.  At  times 
Jesus  relied  on  auto-suggestion  to  produce 
the  desired  result.  The  woman  who  com- 
plained she  had  ''suffered  many  things  from 
many  physicians"  in  the  course  of  twelve 
years  and  had  spent  all  she  possessed  on 
fees  and  was  rather  worse  than  when  her 
treatment  began,  declared  that  if  she  could 
only  touch  the  hem  of  Jesus'  garment  she 
believed  she  would  be  healed;  and,  touching 
it,  her  ailment  left  her.*  Jesus,  turning  to 
her,  said,  ''Thy  faith  hath  made  thee  whole,'' 
the  point  being  that  it  was  not  his  power  that 
healed,  but  her  auto-suggestion.^ 

Jesus  was  not  always  successful  in  his 
healing.  In  his  native  town  he  could  do  no 
great  work  because  his  fellow  citizens  had 

»  Mark  5  :  25-34. 
'  Mark  6  :  5-6. 

115 


THE    LIFE    OF    JESUS 

no  faith  in  him.^  And  the  same  biographer 
who  records  this  confession  of  his,  adds  the 
saying,  ''A  prophet  is  not  without  honor, 
but  in  his  own  country,  and  among  his  own 
kind. ' '  2  One  condition  of  success,  according 
to  Jesus,  was  the  patient's  possession  of 
faith.  ''If  thou  canst  believe,"  he  is  re- 
ported to  have  said ;  ' '  all  things  are  possible 
to  him  that  believeth. ' ' ' 

"When  we  ask  for  precise  details  of  what 
Jesus  accomplished  in  his  healing  ministry — 
just  what  the  diseases  cured  were,  the  num- 
ber cured  and  the  permanency  of  the  cure — 
we  are  confronted  with  insurmountable  dif- 
ficulties. Not  only  are  the  data  upon  which 
to  arrive  at  accurate  conclusions  on  these 
points  lacking,  but  even  when  all  three  Gos- 
pels report  the  same  incident  we  see  that 
the  story  has  grown  with  the  telling — a  char- 
acteristic of  the  records  which  we  had  occa- 
sion to  note  in  our  study  of  the  temptation 
of  Jesus.  When  we  pass  from  the  earlier 
to  the  later  documents  we  observe  an  in- 
crease in  the  element  of  the  marvellous,  due 

'  Mark  6  :  5-6.  "  Mark  6  :  4. 

"Mark  6:5;   9  :  23. 

116 


MINISTRY    OF    HEALING 

to  an  idealizing  impulse  which  enhances  the 
first  legendary  details  with  a  fresh  incre- 
ment of  the  marvellous  each  time  the  orig- 
inal unembellished  fact  is  retold.  Compare, 
for  instance,  the  three  records  of  each  of 
the  following  incidents  in  the  healing  min- 
istry of  Jesus: 

Mark  3  :  10.  The  people  press  about  Jesus 
to  be  healed  (but  no  cure  is  mentioned). 

Matthew  9  :  20.  The  miraculous  has  been 
effected.  A  woman  in  the  crowd  is  healed 
by  touching  the  hem  of  his  garment. 

Luke  6  :  19.  All  who  touched  him  were 
healed.  Thus  from  a  simple  nucleus  of  fact 
a  miracle  gradually  takes  shape,  illustrating 
an  increasing  expansion  of  the  original  state- 
ment in  response  to  the  legendary  impulse. 

Again  we  read :  Mark  1 :  32,  34.  All  the 
sick  were  brought  to  Jesus  and  he  healed 
some. 

Matt.  8  :  15.  Many  were  brought  to  him 
and  he  healed  all. 

Luke  4  :  40.  All  were  brought  to  him  and 
he  healed  all. 

Once  more  we  read: 
117 


THE    LIFE    OF    JESUS 

Mark  7  :  32,  37.  One  man,  deaf  and  with 
an  impediment  in  his  speech,  is  healed. 

Matt.  15  :  30.  A  whole  multitude  of  lame, 
blind,  and  dumb  are  healed. 

At  Gerasa,  according  to  the  earliest  Gos- 
pel, one  demoniac  was  relieved  of  an  evil 
spirit.  According  to  Matthew,  two  were 
cured.  So,  again,  in  the  story  of  the  raising 
of  Jairus '  daughter,  the  records  read :  ' '  She 
is  not  dead,  but  sleeping, "  ' '  she  is  a-dying, ' ' 
**she  is  even  now  dead."  Hence,  the  impos- 
sibility of  determining  precisely  what  oc- 
curred while  admitting  that  the  varying  nar- 
ratives have  a  root  in  one  or  another  healing 
act  of  Jesus.  Seeing  him  perform  some  won- 
derful deed,  restoring  to  normal  well-being 
persons  suffering  from  nervous  disorder,  it 
is  easy  to  understand  how  Jesus '  contempor- 
aries would  ascribe  to  him  every  species  of 
miraculous  power  without  pausing  either  to 
distinguish  between  diseases  susceptible  of 
healing  by  psychical  methods  and  those  not 
amenable  to  such  treatment,  or  to  question 
the  permanency  of  the  cures  effected. 

Just  how  far  thought  can  influence  bodily 
states  is  one  of  the  burning  therapeutic  ques- 
118 


MINISTRY    OF    HEALING 

tions  of  the  day,  but  the  notion  that  thought, 
or  suggestion,  is  a  ''panacea,"  equal  to  cur- 
ing all  manner  of  disease,  is  an  assumption 
for  which  there  is  no  warrant  in  the  reported 
ministry  of  Jesus. 

We  come  now  to  the  consideration  of  mir- 
acles as  distinguished  from  works  of  healing. 
For,  while  the  word  miracle,  as  a  synonym 
for  wonderful,  applies  to  the  recorded  cures, 
there  is  also  its  more  specific  use  to  describe 
not  merely  that  which  excites  admiration  or 
astonishment,  but  that  which  has  no  analogy 
in  life  as  we  know  it — a  departure  from  the 
established  order  of  things,  an  alleged  act 
not  attributable  to  any  of  the  known  causal 
operations  of  Nature  and  hence  doing  vio- 
lence to  the  known  laws  of  the  physical  world. 

Of  miracles  in  this  restricted  sense  of  the 
word  the  Synoptics  record  several  distinct 
types.  What  construction  are  we  to  put 
upon  these?  Are  they  to  be  accepted  as 
actual  but  inexplicable  occurrences,  or  as 
spontaneous  inventions  originating  in  the 
wake  of  the  wonderful  healings  Jesus 
achieved,  or,  again,  as  merely  garbled  re- 
ports of  discourses  in  which  Jesus  used  this 
d  119 


THE    LIFE    OF    JESUS 

material  to  point  some  moral  lesson  or 
spiritual  truth?  For  tliis  third  point  of  view 
there  seems  to  be  considerable  warrant.  The 
Gospels  have  preserved  an  interesting  exam- 
ple of  precisely  such  a  garbling  process  in 
the  reports  of  Matthew  and  Mark  that  Jesus 
had  cursed  a  fig  tree.  Comparing  their  ac- 
counts with  what  we  read  in  Luke's  parable 
of  a  fruitless  fig  tree  and  remembering  that 
Luke  was,  according  to  his  own  statement,^ 
a  sifter  of  literary  material,  we  conclude  that 
Jesus  at  one  time  spoke  a  parable  to  teach 
Israel  her  unworthiness  to  inherit  the  King- 
dom. She  made  a  display  of  piety,  but  bore 
no  fruit  of  righteousness.  Therefore  must 
she  perish  like  the  fig  tree,  which  made  a  fine 
outward  showing  of  leaves,  but  bore  no  fruit, 
fit  only  to  be  cut  down  and  cast  into  the  fire. 
In  the  three  reportings  of  the  original  only 
one  writer  (Luke)  retained  the  teacher's 
purpose;  the  other  two  transmitted  merely 
the  illustrative  details,  a  fig  tree  in  full  leaf, 
a  withering,  a  doom;  thus  reducing  the  orig- 
inal ethical  parable  to  a  mere  anecdote  and 
thereby  exposing  Jesus  to  the  charge  of  *  *  un- 

*  Luke   1  :  1-4. 

120 


MINISTRY    OF    HEALING 

reasonable  violence  against  an  innocent  and 
unconscious  tree. "  ^  ^ 

If,  then,  Jesus  has  been  misreported  here, 
may  it  not  be  that  in  the  case  of  some  of 
the  miracles  a  similar  process  of  misrepre- 
sentation obtained?  In  other  words,  shall 
we  not  approximate  the  truth  as  to  their 
original  form  and  purpose  if  we  see  in  them 
the  remains  of  parables  or  allegories?  To 
illustrate,  take  one  of  the  several  accounts 
of  the  feeding  of  five  thousand  with  a  few 
loaves  and  two  small  fishes.^  Here  it  seems 
quite  clear  that  this  feeding  was  not  an  his- 
torical occurrence,  but  a  parable  intended  to 
show  how  a  religious  teacher,  with  a  small 
quantum  of  spiritual  food  feeds  thousands 
of  hungry  souls,  the  immaterial  food  increas- 
ing with  its  consumption  so  that  there  re- 
mains over,  as  it  were,  much  more  than  was 
imparted,  kindling  fresh  thought  and  im- 
pulse in  the  recipients  and  creating  in  them 
power  to  satisfy  the  spiritual  hunger  of 
other  souls.     Or  have  we  here  the  spontane- 

>  Compare  Luke  13  :  6-9  with  Matt.  21  :  19  and  Mark 
11  :  12. 

'Matt.  14:15-21;  15:32-38;  Mark  6:35-44;  8:1-9; 
Luke  9  :  12-17. 

121 


THE    LIFE    OF    JESUS 

ous  product  of  one  who  felt  persuaded  that 
Jesus  performed  miracles  far  exceeding 
those  of  Old  Testament  prophets'?  Does  the 
writer  here  illustrate  the  natural  tendency 
to  parallel  and  improve  upon  stories  told  of 
the  two  chief  predecessors  of  Jesus,  Moses 
and  Elijah,  representing  respectively  the 
Law  and  the  Prophets?  If  Moses  fed  Israel 
for  a  year  in  the  wilderness^  and  Elijah  mul- 
tiplied the  widow's  cruse  of  oiP  and  his  suc- 
cessor made  twenty  loaves  suffice  for  a 
hundred  prophets,  ' '  so  that  they  did  eat  and 
leave  thereof,"  how  much  more  would  Jesus 
dol 

Or,  again,  may  not  the  narrative  be  a 
blend  of  Old  Testament  counterparts  and  the 
"materialization"  of  Jesus'  function  as  dis- 
penser of  the  '* bread  of  life"?  Certainly  if 
we  take  the  miracle  literally  we  are  at  once 
involved  in  most  perplexing  difficulties,  be- 
cause it  represents  the  Teacher  as  possess- 
ing a  control  over  material  objects  and 
physical  forces  that  stands  in  no  necessary 
relation  to  the  human  portraiture  presented 

^Exod.  26. 

'II  Kings  4:42. 

122 


MINISTRY    OF    HEALING 

by  the  Synoptics.  Hence  the  reader  feels 
bound  to  find  a  way  of  escape  from  these 
difficulties.  But  all  attempts  (and  many 
have  been  made)  to  treat  the  incident  as  an 
actual  occurrence  and  put  upon  it  a  plausi- 
ble construction  have  failed.  For  either  the 
meaning  of  this  text  has  been  emasculated, 
or  it  has  been  perverted,  as  when  it  is  sug- 
gested that  many  of  the  five  thousand  had 
brought  provisions  with  them,  especially 
they  who  were  on  their  way  to  the  Passover 
feast  at  Jerusalem!  Far  more  rational  it  is 
and  wholly  in  keeping  with  the  mental  habits 
and  thought-tendencies  of  that  time  to  see 
in  this  story  ' '  the  confusion  of  a  symbol  with 
a  fact,"  describing  as  an  actual  occurrence 
what  was  originally  an  illustration  of  an 
idea.  And  for  such  a  view  of  the  miracle 
there  is  all  the  more  warrant  when  we  read 
the  account  of  a  miraculous  draught  of  fishes 
related  in  the  fifth  chapter  of  Luke's  Gos- 
pel. For  this  story  shows  abundant  evidence 
of  a  symbolical  intent  behind  it.  Jesus,  hav- 
ing entered  a  boat,  pushes  it  off  a  bit  and 
then  turns  to  teach  the  crowd  gathered  on 
the  shore  of  the  lake.  At  the  close  of  his 
123 


THE    LIFE    OF    JESUS 

address  he  bids  Peter  ''push  out  into  the 
deep  and  lower  his  nets."  Despite  his  ill- 
luck  of  the  preceding  night,  the  nets  now 
rapidly  fill  with  fish,  even  to  the  breaking 
point.  Overcome  with  wonder,  Peter  falls 
at  Jesus'  feet,  whereupon  Jesus  says  to  him, 
** Henceforth  thou  shalt  catch  men."  When 
Peter  and  his  partners,  James  and  John, 
come  ashore  they  ''leave  all  and  follow 
Jesus."  All  three  are  to  be  henceforth 
"fishers  of  men,"  far  out  in  the  deep.  Surely 
the  significance  of  the  narrative  is  not  far 
to  seek. 

Had  not  Jesus  compared  the  Kingdom  of 
Heaven  to  a  net  that  was  lowered  into  the 
sea  and  gathered  of  every  kindT  Is  not  the 
sea  the  world,  in  which  are  men  of  every 
race?  Did  not  the  apostle  Paul  deplore  and 
endeavor  to  heal  the  breach  in  the  infant 
Church  of  which  Peter,  James  and  John 
were  the  anti-Gentile  representatives,  oppos- 
ing his  broad  inclusive  terms  of  fellowship?^ 
Must  we  not,  therefore,  see,  in  Peter's  un- 
willingness to  let  down  the  net,  an  illustra- 

» Matt.   13  :  47. 
'  Gal.  2  :  9. 

124 


MINISTRY    OF    HEALING 

tion  of  the  reluctance  of  the  narrow  Jewish 
party  to  admit  Gentiles  into  the  church? 
And  when,  in  the  appendix  to  the  Fourth 
Gospel,*  we  read  a  similar  story,  with  the 
important  differentiating  feature  of  the 
unbroken  nets,  does  it  not  plainly  symbolize 
that  restoration  of  harmony  and  unity  in  the 
Church  which  crowned  the  labors  of  the 
apostle  to  the  Gentiles? 

A  similar  interpretation  of  miracle-stories 
in  terms  of  allegorj^,  or  of  parable,  is  irre- 
sistibly suggested  in  those  relating  to  the 
stilling  of  a  storm,  or  to  walking  upon  the 
water.  'Tis  easy  to  conjecture  the  sort  of 
expressions  Jesus  would  have  used  in  preach- 
ing his  gospel  of  poise  and  trust.  Easy,  also, 
it  is  to  see  how  these  eventually  materialized 
in  Gospel-stories.  Toward  their  formation 
many  a  passage  from  the  Psalms  or  Job  or 
Isaiah  would  contribute  cardinal  phrases  and 
figures  of  speech;  e.  g.,  ''He  maketh  the 
storm  a  calm,  so  that  the  waves  thereof  are 
still,"  ''treadeth  upon  the  waves  of  the  sea," 
''maketh  a  way  in  the  sea,  and  a  path  in  the 
mighty  waters. ' '  ^ 

'John   21  :  11.       ='Ps.   107  :  29;   Job   9:8;    Isa.  43  :  16. 

125 


THE    LIFE    OF    JESUS 

Even  the  most  stupendous  of  all  the  mira- 
cles ascribed  to  Jesus,  the  raising  of  La- 
zarus, recorded  only  in  the  Fourth  Gospel, 
proves  on  examination,  to  take  its  place  in 
the  same  category  with  the  foregoing.  Pro- 
fessor Bacon  of  Yale,  in  his  recent  work  on 
this  Gospel,  calls  it  ''the  preeminently  un- 
real of  the  unreal  narratives  of  the  Fourth 
Gospel."^  Elsewhere  in  the  same  book  he 
says:  "It  is  simply  inconceivable  that  a 
miracle  of  such  magnitude,  performed  on  the 
eve  of  the  last  momentous  week  of  Jesus' 
life,  in  the  presence  of  crowds,  in  a  suburb 
of  Jerusalem,  a  miracle  which  according  to 
the  Fourth  Gospel  was  the  immediate  cause 
of  the  crucifixion,  should  have  been  passed 
over  by  all  three  of  the  Synoptists.  On  this 
ground  alone  we  are  compelled  to  conclude 
that  the  story  is  symbolical."  Nor  are  its 
component  elements  far  to  seek.  Woven,  the 
story  is,  out  of  scattered  hints  furnished  by 

(1)  the  narrative  in  the  tenth  chapter  of 
Luke,  of  Jesus  at  supper  in  the  home  of 
Lazarus,  with  his  sisters  Martha  and  Mary, 

(2)  the  parable  of  Dives  and  Lazarus,  in 

'B.  W.  Bacon:     "The  Fourth  Gospel,"  p.  345. 
126 


MINISTRY    OF    HEALING 

the  sixteenth  chapter  of  the  same  Gospel, 
closing  with  the  significant  words,  ''Neither 
will  they  be  persuaded,  though  one  rose  from 
the  dead."  Further  contributions  were  sup- 
plied by  the  stories  of  the  raising  of  Jairus ' 
daughter  and  the  son  of  the  widow  of  Nain, 
stories  which,  we  have  already  seen,  bear 
witness  to  the  gradual  heightening  of  the 
marvellous  in  the  process  of  transmission. 
First  we  have  a  girl  who  has  just  expired 
(though,  according  to  earlier  accounts,  she 
was  "a-dying"  or  ''only  sleeping"),  and 
then  a  young  man  on  the  point  of  being 
buried.  It  was  but  a  step  from  this  to  the 
report  of  a  body,  four  days  dead  and  already 
decomposing,  restored  to  life. 

From  what  has  been  thus  far  said  the  fol- 
lowing conclusions  may  be  legitimately 
drawn:  First,  Jesus  did  exercise  a  wonder- 
ful healing  influence  over  people  physically, 
mentally  and  morally  sick.  And  this  influ- 
ence is  precisely  what  we  should  expect, 
given  a  passion  for  beneficent  helpfulness  in 
a  great  moral  and  spiritual  personality.  Sec- 
ond, the  documents  recording  Jesus'  deeds 
do  not  enable  us  to  decide  precisely  what 
127 


THE    LIFE    OF    JESUS 

was  done  by  him  in  every  case.  At  times 
the  record  is  imperfect;  occasionally  the 
original  fact  has  been  enlarged  upon  in  re- 
sponse to  the  legendary  impulse. 

Third,  whereas  in  the  group  of  healing 
narratives  nothing  is  stated  that  need  be 
doubted,  in  the  group  of  recorded  miracles, 
' '  all  must  be  doubted  as  actual  occurrences, ' ' 
to  quote  Professor  Ropes  of  Harvard  Uni- 
versity. Yet  all  may  be  warrantably  ac- 
counted for  in  terms  of  parable,  or  allegory, 
or  appeal  to  Old  Testament  precedents. 

Certain  commentators  in  their  effort  to  es- 
tablish the  credibility  of  the  miracles  as  ac- 
tual occurrences,  point  to  "the  narrow  lim- 
its of  human  knowledge,"  and  to  the  possi- 
bility of  discoveries  that  will  ''fill  the  gaps 
of  our  ignorance"  and  furnish  ''adequate 
causes  for  inexplicable  events."  Far  be 
it  from  us  to  dogmatize  upon  what  lies 
beyond  the  narrow  limits  of  our  knowledge 
in  an  illimitable  cosmos.  "To  the  min- 
now," said  Carlyle,  "every  nook  and  corner 
of  its  little  creek  is  familiar,  but  does  it  know 
the  tides,  monsoons,  eclipses  by  which  its  lit- 
tle creek  is  regulated?  Such  a  minnow  is 
128 


MINISTRY   OP   HEALING 

man;  his  ocean  the  infinite  universe;  his 
tides,  monsoons  and  eclipses,  the  mysterious 
courses  of  Providence  through  ages  and 
ages."  It  behooves  us,  therefore,  to  be  cir- 
cumspect and  cautious  in  the  attitude  we  take 
toward  miracles.  Yet  equally  essential  it  is 
that  in  accordance  with  Carlyle's  doctrine, 
we  affirm  conformity  to  natural  law  as  a  sine 
qua  non  for  acceptance  of  any  miracle  as  an 
actual  occurrence. 

A  fourth  conclusion  to  which  our  study  of 
the  records  leads  us  is  that  the  evidence  they 
furnish  for  the  reality  of  the  miracles  is  as 
inadequate  and  unsatisfying  as  that  adduced 
in  the  "Pitakas"  and  the  ''Avesta"  for  be- 
lief in  the  miraculous  deeds  ascribed  to  the 
Buddha  and  to  Zoroaster.  No  modern  court 
of  justice  would  for  a  moment  entertain  the 
evidence  as  valid.  Note,  to  begin  with,  that 
the  Gospel  narratives  are  not  the  reports  of 
eye-witnesses,  but  represent  the  testimony  of 
men  removed  by  two  to  four  generations 
from  the  events  described.  These  records 
were  transmitted  orally  for  ten  or  twenty 
years  before  they  were  committed  to  writing. 
One  of  the  earliest  attempts  at  transferring 
129 


THE    LIFE    OP   JESUS 

the  oral  tradition  to  written  form  was  made 
by  Matthew,  the  disciple  of  Jesus.  His  com- 
pilation of  sayings  of  Jesus  formed  the 
nucleus  around  which  additional  material 
slowly  gathered  in  the  course  of  half  a  cen- 
tury until  a  complete  gospel  appeared,  natur- 
ally called  "Matthew,"  because  its  nucleus 
had  been  supplied  by  the  disciple  of  that 
name.  Another  early  attempt  at  committing 
oral  tradition  to  writing  was  made  by  one 
Mark,  a  disciple  of  Peter.  He  ''wrote  down 
all  he  could  remember  of  what  Peter  had  told 
him  concerning  Jesus, ' '  having  taken  special 
care  "to  forget  nothing  and  to  change  noth- 
ing." These  interesting  and  illuminating 
details  have  been  furnished  us  by  Papias, 
who  was  bishop  of  Hieropolis  about  the  year 
120  A.  D.,  and  whose  "Exposition  of  the 
Teachings  of  Jesus"  has  been  in  part  pre- 
served for  us  by  Eusebius,  the  first  historian 
of  the  Christian  Church,  and  a  contemporary 
of  Constantine.  Thus  it  is  clear  that  we  do 
not  know  who  were  the  writers  of  the  Gos- 
pels, as  we  have  them.  Of  the  sources  upon 
which  they  drew  we  have  no  knowledge.  The 
author  of  the  third  Gospel  tells  us  in  his 
130 


MINISTRY    OF    HEALING 

preface  that  he  had  several  manuscripts 
from  which  to  prepare  a  new  and  better  life 
of  Jesus  than  any  thus  far  published;  but 
what  these  were  we  do  not  know.  Nor  again 
do  we  know  just  exactly  what  transpired  in 
the  case  of  every  incident  reported.  For  the 
accounts,  as  we  have  seen,  differ  in  details. 
Summarized  in  a  single  sentence,  the  evi- 
dence in  support  of  the  miracles  is  tanta- 
mount to  this:  Somebody  (we  know  not  who 
the  reporter  was)  said  that  somebody  else 
(we  know  not  who  the  spectator  was)  saw 
something  strange  (the  precise  details  are 
indeterminable)  somewhere  (the  records  do 
not  always  agree  on  the  place)  at  some  other 
time  and  prior  to  the  year  30  A.  D.  (the 
latest  assignable  date  for  the  death  of 
Jesus). 

But  let  it  be  carefully  noted  that  this  in- 
sufficiency of  the  evidence  does  not  impeach 
the  writers.  Their  sincerity  of  purpose, 
their  honesty  and  intellectual  integrity  stand 
unquestioned.  No  opinion  or  belief  needs  to 
be  true  in  order  to  be  believed.  In  all  ages 
and  lands  there  have  been  men  who  died  for 
their  beliefs.  And  what  follows  from  this 
131 


THE    LIFE    OF    JESUS 

fact  is  not  that  the  beliefs  were  true,  but  that 
they  were  believed  to  be  true.  We  have  no 
reason  whatever  to  doubt  that  the  Evange- 
lists believed  in  the  occurrence  of  the  inci- 
dents they  reported.  We  are  justified  in 
questioning  only  their  competency,  not  their 
honesty,  and  the  more  startling  the  story 
they  tell,  the  greater  the  amount  of  evidence 
required  for  us  to  believe  it.  We  hold,  with 
Hume,  that  it  is  much  more  likely  that  men 
should  be  mistaken  in  what  they  hear  or  see 
than  that  a  miracle  should  have  occurred. 
And  precisely  as  we  do  not  say  Suetonius 
lied  when  he  said  there  was  an  earthquake 
the  moment  Caesar  died,  so  in  the  case  of 
the  Gospel-writers  we  say  they  reported 
what  they  believed  happened,  but  for  which 
the  evidence  is  altogether  insufficient.  Even 
representative  orthodox  scholars  who  feel 
constrained  to  accept  the  miracles  as  actual 
occurrences,  yet  insist  that  only  as  they  in- 
volve no  violation  of  known  laws  and  are 
backed  by  adequate  evidence  can  acceptance 
of  them  be  legitimately  required.  Time  was 
when  such  scholars  used  the  New  Testament 
miracles  as  evidences  of  the  supernatural 
132 


MINISTRY    OF    HEALING 

character  and  origin  of  Christianity.  To- 
day miracles  no  longer  play  this  leading  role, 
or  even  a  subordinate  part,  in  the  presenta- 
tion of  ''Christian  evidences.**  Instead  of 
miracles  testifying  to  the  divinity  that  was 
in  Jesus,  the  relation  has  been  reversed,  i.  e., 
the  spiritual  greatness  of  Jesus  testifies  to 
the  rise  and  growth  of  miracle-stories  as  the 
spontaneous  product  of  contemporary  rever- 
ence and  love,  stories  shaped  in  accordance 
with  current  conceptions  of  God  and  Nature. 
So  radically  different  were  these  from  our 
modern  ideas  of  the  world  and  its  govern- 
ment that  when  reading  the  accounts  of  heal- 
ings and  miracles  we  must  bear  in  mind  the 
theology  and  cosmology  which  obtained  in 
Palestine  in  Jesus'  day.  God  was  conceived 
as  a  ''great,  non-natural,  magnified  man," 
located  on  a  throne  behind  the  blue  sky,  su- 
perintending the  ongoing  of  his  world — a 
three-story  structure,  governed  in  an  alto- 
gether arbitrary  fashion  by  his  changeable 
will.  There  obtained,  also,  in  that  distant 
day  and  place  the  belief  that  evil  spirits, 
agents  of  the  Almighty,  were  empowered  by 
Him  to  exercise  a  malign  influence,  to  inflict 
133 


THE    LIFE    OF    JESUS 

physical  disease  or  nervous  disorder  on  peo- 
ple. Moreover,  it  was  believed  that  the 
power  to  tempt  persons  to  do  evil  also  lay 
within  the  mysterious  power  of  these  super- 
natural personalities.  In  the  absence  of  our 
modern  conception  of  law,  any  reported 
event,  however  strange  or  marvellous,  took 
its  place  among  things  probable  and  possi- 
ble ;  and  whatsoever  was  inexplicable  thereby 
gave  evidence  of  a  supernatural  cause.  Upon 
such  an  order  of  ideas  do  the  Gospel  narra- 
tives of  healings  and  miracles  rest.  The 
world  was  in  its  childhood,  hence  its  beliefs 
and  interpretations  were  of  the  child-like 
kind.  For  the  race  in  its  evolution  does  but 
reproduce  development-processes  observable 
in  the  individual.  In  the  average  normal 
child  one  sees  imagination  more  active  than 
reason,  feeling  more  fully  developed  than 
judgment,  fancy  and  credulity  more  domin- 
ant than  logical  reasoning,  innocent  accept- 
ance of  statements  and  with  no  demand  for 
proofs.  Ordinary  children  find  no  difficulty 
in  conceiving  of  birds  and  animals  talking  as 
in  Aesop's  fables,  nor  is  their  imagination 
checked  in  endowing  with  life  and  personal- 
134 


MINISTRY    OF    HEALING 

ity,  the  objects  of  tlieir  play,  their  dolls  and 
tin  soldiers,  the  tables  and  the  chairs.  Ex- 
actly so  was  it  in  the  period  we  call  the  child- 
hood of  the  race.  Then  reason  and  judgment 
were  still  undeveloped  and  the  imagination 
was  at  work  endowing  natural  forces  and 
phenomena  with  spirits,  good  and  evil.  For 
as  yet  nothing  was  known  of  cause  and  ef- 
fect, of  natural  law,  in  the  operations  of 
Nature.  The  conception  of  disease  and  death 
as  natural  occurrences,  resulting  from 
natural  causes  in  the  orderly  ongoing  of  the 
universe,  had  no  place  in  the  thought  of  the 
childhood  of  the  race.  The  question  of  the 
probable  and  the  improbable,  of  the  possi- 
ble and  the  impossible,  was  wholly  alien  to 
the  thinking  of  that  time. 

And  just  as  in  children,  imagination  and 
fancy  are  stronger  than  judgment,  so  inno- 
cent, unquestioning  faith  is  stronger  than  ra- 
tional doubt.  The  simple  affirmation  of 
father  or  mother  suffices,  doubt  comes  later 
with  observation  and  experience.  The  child 
believes  that  Santa  Claus  comes  down  the 
chimney,  never  questioning  whether  the 
chimney  is  wide  enough  for  him  and  his 
10  135 


THE    LIFE    OF    JESUS 

pack.  The  cliild  (and  many  an  adult,  too) 
believes  the  story  of  the  star  standing  still 
directly  over  the  stable  at  Bethlehem,  never 
questioning  the  possibility  of  a  star  desig- 
nating, at  a  distance  of  thousands  of  miles, 
a  particular  building.  So  here,  again,  in  the 
childhood  of  the  race  we  find  the  same  ab- 
sence of  questioning,  the  same  credulity,  the 
same  simple  acceptance  of  wonders  without 
asking  for  proof.  The  Roman  historians, 
Tacitus,  Livy,  Suetonius,  of  the  second  cen- 
tury of  our  era,  relate  that  whenever  a 
Caesar  or  a  consul  died,  a  flaming  sword  was 
brandished  in  the  sky,  or  a  meteor  shot 
through  the  air,  or  an  ox  spoke.  But  not  one 
of  these  historians  questions  the  occurrence 
of  what  he  relates.  Bishop  Lightfoot  tells 
us  that  the  Jews  at  the  time  of  Jesus  were 
given  over  to  every  species  of  credulity, 
ready  to  believe  any  and  every  strange  story 
reported  to  them,  and  resorting  themselves  to 
amulets,  charms  and  incantations.  The  early 
Christian  Fathers,  Cyprian,  Tertullian,  Ori- 
gen,  Clement,  believed  the  stars  were  gods, 
and  they  accepted  ''Pagan"  miracles  as 
readily  as  those  of  Christian  origin.  So  was 
136 


MINISTRY    OF    HE^VLING 

it  in  the  cliildliood  of  the  race.  Its  manhood 
dawned  in  the  wonderful  thirteenth  century 
when  freedom  was  reborn  after  the  ecclesi- 
astical bondage  of  a  thousand  years,  when 
the  free,  critical,  investigating  spirit  of  the 
Greeks  was  once  more  manifest.  And  when 
the  discoveries  of  Copernicus,  Galileo  and 
Newton  were  made  known  and  men  began  to 
realize  the  revolutionizing  etfect  of  what  had 
been  discovered  upon  the  popular  ''Ptole- 
maic" theology,  all  incidents  reported  in  the 
Gospels  which  appeared  to  contradict  the  dis- 
covered facts  of  the  reign  of  law  and  the  or- 
derly processes  of  Nature,  were  promptly 
subjected  to  reexamination, — and  the  end  is 
not  yet. 

Four  distinct  attitudes  have  been  taken 
toward  the  subject  we  are  considering. 
First,  that  of  the  dogmatist.  He  stoutly  in- 
sists on  supernaturalism  and  consequently  on 
the  actual  occurrence  of  all  reported  mira- 
cles. He  holds  that  Jesus  being  ''divine" 
was  equal  to  the  performing  of  any  and  every 
miracle.  But  it  should  be  clear  that  there  is 
no  necessary  relation  between  transcendent 
spiritual  character  and  ability  to  do  physical 
137 


THE    LIFE    OF    JESUS 

wonders.  Moreover,  the  Synoptic  Gospels  do 
not  support  a  doctrine  of  the  "divinity"  of 
Jesus.  That  was  reserved  for  the  Fourth 
Gospel. 

Over  against  the  dogmatist  stands  the 
crude,  raw  rationalist  repudiating  the  re- 
ported miracles  as  "pure  fictions,"  and  con- 
tending that  Jesus  was  "merely  a  healer." 
As  though  the  miracles  are  to  be  set  down  as 
valueless  even  if  construed  as  fictions.  As 
though  we  ever  should  have  heard  of  Jesus 
had  he  been  only  a  healer!  No  great  reli- 
gious movement  would  ever  have  originated 
with  him  had  he  been  '  *  merely  a  healer. ' '  At 
most,  that  would  have  made  him  the  sensa- 
tion of  a  decade,  never  a  Master  of  the  ages. 

A  third  attitude  is  that  of  the  iconoclast 
who  ruthlessly  sweeps  away  the  whole  brood 
of  wonder-stories,  labeling  them  legends  and 
declaring  them  to  be  "utterly  worthless." 
But  I  take  it  that  transcendent  worth  attaches 
to  these  stories,  even  regarded  as  legends, 
because  they  testify,  like  the  legends  of 
Jesus'  birth  and  childhood,  and  temptation, 
to  his  exceptional  greatness.  As  a  brilliant 
halo  in  the  sky  proves  the  existence  of  the 
138 


MINISTRY    OF    HEALING 

brighter  sun  beyond  it,  so  every  recorded 
legend  is  evidence  of  a  great  moral  and  spir- 
itual light  behind  it.  Hence,  the  deeper  sig- 
nificance of  those  narratives  supposed  to  be 
worthless  because  unhistorical.  They  testify 
to  a  vast  spiritual  nobility  in  Jesus,  for,  as 
has  already  been  said,  no  legends,  such  as 
those  related  of  him,  would  ever  have  taken 
shape  had  Jesus  been  an  average  or  common- 
place person. 

It  remains  to  touch  upon  a  fourth  attitude 
taken  toward  our  subject.  Its  characteristic 
is  discrimination.  It  distinguishes  between 
works  of  healing,  the  genuineness  of  which 
there  is  no  valid  reason  for  doubting,  and 
miracles,  which  must  be  doubted  as  actual 
occurrences,  both  because  they  contradict 
known  laws  and  because  the  evidence  in  sup- 
port of  them  is  inadequate.  Yet  in  its  dis- 
criminating estimate  of  the  latter,  this  atti- 
tude is  constructive  and  sees  in  the  miracles 
literary  remains  of  parables  or  allegories,  or 
counterparts  of  prophetic  types.  A  further 
mark  of  this  attitude  is  its  appreciation  of 
the  fact  that  priceless  worth  attaches  to  these 
stories,  even  if  they  be  ''outright  inven- 
139 


THE    LIFE    OF   JESUS 

tions,"  because  of  the  light  they  shed,  even 
as  such,  upon  the  personality  of  Jesus,  tes- 
tifying to  his  essential  greatness  and  good- 
ness. 

In  his  capacity  as  a  moral  and  religious 
teacher  he  made  use  of  metaphors  and  simi- 
les as  means  for  clarifying  his  message. 
Often  did  he  speak  allegorically  or  in  para- 
bles and  often  was  he  misunderstood,  despite 
his  express  effort  to  be  clear.  Thus  in  the 
process  of  oral  transmission  many  an  illus- 
trated lesson  lost  its  particular  intended 
point,  and  when  finally  committed  to  writing 
appeared  as  a  miracle,  or  as  an  anecdote, 
with  no  ethical  implication  whatever.  Such, 
at  least,  as  we  have  seen,  is  the  natural  his- 
tory of  most  of  the  miracles  reported  by  the 
Synoptists. 

Finally,  it  must  be  observed  that,  as  one 
singularly  endowed  with  the  gift  of  healing, 
Jesus  used  his  power  with  utter  consecra- 
tion. His  aim  was  not  to  gain  notoriety,  not 
to  gratify  curiosity,  not  to  gain  authority  for 
his  message,  not  to  win  converts  to  his  beliefs, 
but  solely  to  promote  the  physical,  moral  and 
spiritual  good  of  all  who  sought  his  help. 
140 


PREREQUISITES  FOR  KNOWING  WHAT  JESUS 
TAUGHT 

The  public  life  of  Jesus  was  a  ministry  of 
healing  and  of  teaching.  And  if  the  former 
be  the  more  fully  attested,  the  latter  may  lay 
claim  to  priority  of  attestation  since  sayings 
(logia)  of  Jesus  were  committed  to  writing 
before  any  record  was  made  of  his  deeds. ^ 

All  three  of  the  Synoptics  present  Jesus  as 
a  teacher.  There  is  a  'Hriple  tradition"  to 
this  effect,  albeit  Mark's  Gospel  contains  but 
a  few  scattered  precepts  as  compared  with 
the  other  two  Evangelists',  predominantly 
devoted,  as  they  are,  to  an  exposition  of  what 
Jesus  taught. 

Why  should  it  be  considered  difficult  to  de- 
cide what  Jesus '  teachings  were  1  Why  must 
we  be  on  our  guard  against  mistaken  concep- 
tions of  his  message  and  take  note  of  pre- 

*  According  to  Papias,  op.  cit. 

141 


THE    LIFE    OF    JESUS 

requisites  for  a  proper  understanding  and 
appreciation  of  what  he  taught?  The  answer 
is  to  be  found  partly  in  the  character  of  the 
records  and  partly  in  certain  practices  and 
tendencies  all  too  common  among  ''liberal" 
readers.  If  instead  of  four  Gospels  we  had 
only  one,  and  that  one  written  by  Jesus  him- 
self, our  diflSculty  would  be  reduced  to  the 
same  minimum  that  obtains  in  the  case  of  the 
Koran,  of  which  there  is  but  one  text  and  of 
which  Mohammed  was  the  sole  author.  Let 
me  cite  two  examples  of  the  kind  of  difficulty 
we  encounter  in  our  endeavor  to  decide  what 
Jesus  taught. 

We  habitually  speak  of  the  Sermon  on  the 
Mount  as  though  there  were  only  one  version 
of  it.  Whereas  two  editions  have  come  down 
to  us,  the  longer  one  in  Matthew's  gospel  and 
the  shorter  in  Luke's.  In  the  latter,  Jesus  is 
reported  as  saying,  ''Blessed  be  ye  poor"; 
in  the  former,  his  blessing  is  upon  ' '  the  poor 
in  spirit."  ^  Moreover,  in  Matthew's  version 
we  note  an  entire  absence  of  the  maledictions 
found  in  Luke 's,  while  among  the  assured  re- 
sults of  the  higher  criticism  is  the  conclusion 

»Luke  6  :  20;  Matt.  5  :  3. 

142 


KNOWING    WHAT    JESUS  TAUGHT 

that  the  sermon  was  not  spoken  at  a  single 
sitting,  nor  is  it  the  product  of  a  single  mind. 
A  composite  it  is,  made  up  for  the  most  part 
of  sayings,  uttered  by  Jesus  on  various  oc- 
casions, together  with  certain  passages  in- 
corporated at  the  time  when  the  infant 
church  was  persecuted  and  threatened  with 
annihilation.^ 

Again,  we  are  accustomed  to  speak  of  the 
Lord's  Prayer  as  though  there  were  no  ques- 
tion as  to  its  actual  content  and  origin. 
Does  the  Lord's  Prayer  consist  of  the  fifty- 
three  verses  in  the  sixth  chapter  of  Mat- 
thew's Gospel,  or  of  the  thirty-seven  verses 
transmitted  by  the  Gospel  of  Luke?  Did 
Jesus,  when  he  taught  his  disciples  to  pray, 
include  the  three  passages  which  Luke  omits 
in  his  version,  or  did  Matthew  introduce  three 
sentences  that  formed  no  part  of  the  original 
prayer?  ^ 

These  examples  will  serve  to  illustrate  the 
fact  that  it  is  not  always  easy  to  decide  just 
what  Jesus  taught,  and  that  an  essential 
prerequisite  is  some  measure  of  acquaintance 

»Matt.  6  :  10,  11;   7  :  15. 

•Compare  Matt.  6  :  9-13  with  Luke  11  :  2-4. 

143 


THE    LIFE    OF    JESUS 

with  the  assured  results  of  the  higher  criti- 
cism in  this  field.  Recall  the  radical,  far- 
reaching  differences  between  the  Fourth  Gos- 
pel and  the  Synoptics.  These  have  given  rise 
to  a  further  prerequisite,  namely,  appeal  to 
the  latter  only,  for  the  Fourth  Gospel  is  in 
no  sense  an  historical  account  either  of  the 
sayings  or  of  the  deeds  of  Jesus.  Even  such 
ultra-conservative  scholars  as  Sanday  and 
"Worsley  admit  the  difficulty  of  believing  that 
Jesus  ever  uttered  the  speeches  recorded  in 
this  Gospel,  so  altogether  unlike  those  re- 
ported by  the  Synoptists,  which  everywhere 
betoken  historic  reality.  It  may  be  that  the 
ethical  teachings  contained  in  the  Fourth 
Gospel  have  an  ultimate  foundation  in  actual 
utterances  of  Jesus — a  theory  supported  by 
Harnack  and  Schweizer  with  much  skill — but 
in  their  present  form  and  language  they  are 
beyond  all  possibility  of  identification.  This 
is  particularly  true  of  passages  that  in  spirit 
resemble  the  Synoptic  types,  for  example,  the 
conversations  with  Nicodemus,  with  the 
woman  of  Samaria  and  the  woman  taken  in 
adultery.^    In  short,  the  Fourth  Gospel  ex- 

Vohn  8  :  3-11;  4  :  5,  24;   13. 

144 


KNOWING    WHAT    JESUS  TAUGHT 

hibits  a  very  much  later  and  wholly  different 
order  of  thought  from  that  of  the  Synoptics, 
so  that  if  we  choose  it  as  our  book  of  refer- 
ence for  Jesus'  teachings  we  can  not  make 
equal  and  consistent  use  of  the  Synoptics. 
The  trend  of  criticism  has  been  increasingly 
toward  this  conclusion.  Professor  Bacon,  of 
Yale  University,  the  latest  writer  of  distinc- 
tion on  the  Fourth  Gospel,  leaves  no  doubt  in 
the  reader 's  mind  as  to  the  prior  claim  of  the 
Synoptics  wTien  deciding  what  Jesus  taught. 
And  he  bases  his  conviction  upon  the  funda- 
mental differences  in  origin,  date,  content 
and  purpose  between  these  two  sources  of  in- 
formation. Suffice  it  now  to  touch  only  upon 
some  of  the  more  striking  points  of  contrast. 
The  Synoptics  present  the  teaching  of 
Jesus  as  simple,  plain,  irresistible ;  devoid  of 
theological  terms,  and  spoken  in  a  style  sin- 
gularly direct  and  persuasive.  The  Fourth 
Gospel  does  not  present  an  irresistible 
teacher  at  all,  but  rather  an  awe-inspiring 
expositor,  whose  expositions  are  of  himself, 
his  dignity,  his  glory,  his  descent,  his  origin 
and  eternality — topics  metaphysical,  mys- 
tical, theological;  and  all  alike  clothed  in  a 
145 


THE    LIFE    OP    JESUS 

style  at  once  diffuse,  involved  and  liieratic. 
The  Synoptics  show  us  Jesus  as  a  man  of 
intense  sjrmpathy  and  infinite  tenderness, 
tempted,  suffering,  confessing  weakness  and 
want  of  knowledge  and  subject,  at  times,  to 
certain  moods  of  great  depression  and  mis- 
giving ;  a  wondrous  human  personality,  mak- 
ing a  most  powerful  human  appeal.  The 
Fourth  Gospel  introduces  us  to  Jesus  as  the 
incarnate  Word,  an  emanation  from  Deity 
and,  as  such,  incapable  of  weakness,  tempta- 
tion and  suffering,  either  in  the  garden  or 
on  the  cross,  and  knowing  all  things  from  the 
beginning. 

The  Synoptics  focus  attention  upon  the 
Kingdom  of  God,  the  Fourth  Gospel  men- 
tions it  but  twice,  and  then  quite  incidentally, 
concerned  rather  with  "The  Son  of  God,  the 
only-begotten  of  the  Father."  The  Synop- 
tics teach  that  salvation  is  conditioned  only 
upon  man's  doing  "the  will  of  the  Father 
which  is  in  Heaven";  the  Fourth  Gospel 
makes  "belief"  the  test  of  salvation.  As  the 
theme  of  the  discourses  in  the  Fourth  Gospel 
is  Jesus  himself,  so  in  the  Synoptics  it  is  the 
cause  to  which  he  dedicated  his  life. 
146 


KNOWING    WHAT    JESUS  TAUGHT 

Such  are  some  of  the  more  important  dif- 
ferences between  the  two  sources  of  informa- 
tion. And  while  it  is  quite  possible  to  con- 
struct an  ethics  of  Jesus  out  of  the  Fourth 
Gospel  alone,  yet  if  we  do  so,  accepting  this 
record  as  historically  correct,  w^e  have  no 
alternative  but  to  surrender  the  Synoptics. 

Let  it  not  be  forgotten  that  the  Fourth  Gos- 
pel distinctly  declares  its  purpose  to  have 
been  the  presentation  not  of  an  accurate,  or- 
derly biography  of  Jesus,  but  rather  a  theo- 
logico-philosophical  interpretation  of  his 
person.^ 

And  the  immediate  value  of  the  Gospel  lies 
here:  Permanent  and  universal  as  are  the 
great  spiritual  truths  enunciated  by  the  ' '  In- 
carnate Word, ' '  they  bespeak  the  influence  of 
Alexandrian  and  other  Greek  thought  to 
which  the  Synoptic  biographers  were  stran- 
gers. 

In  other  words,  a  fundamental  prerequisite 
for  deciding  what  Jesus  taught  is  scrupulous 
regard  for  the  source  from  which  sayings  at- 
tributed to  him  are  derived.  And  the  more 
the  higher  criticism  reveals  concerning  the 

-'John   20  :  31:    1  :  12,   18. 

147 


THE    LIFE    OF    JESUS 

* '  Joliannine ' '  literature,  the  more  imperative 
fidelity  to  this  prerequisite  becomes.  We 
must  refrain  from  that  indiscriminate  use  of 
the  Four  Gospels  which  characterizes  many 
a  modern  book  on  the  ethics  of  Jesus.  Here, 
for  example,  are  two  widely  circulated  mono- 
graphs on  "Jesus  Christ  and  the  Social 
Question,"  written  by  Professor  Peabody  of 
Harvard  University  and  Professor  Mat- 
thews of  Chicago.  These  authors  seek  to 
show  just  what  Jesus  taught  concerning 
wealth,  poverty,  the  industrial  order,  mar- 
riage, divorce.  Yet,  without  a  single  word  as 
to  their  sources  of  information,  both  writers 
quote  freely  from  all  four  Gospels,  taking  all 
texts  at  their  face  value  as  equally  authorita- 
tive to  support  the  views  presented.  One  has 
only  to  take  a  glance  at  the  footnotes  in  each 
chapter  to  confirm  the  truth  of  this  criticism. 
Not  only  is  there  this  indiscriminate  use  of 
all  four  Gospels,  calling  in  the  Fourth  to 
strengthen  quotations  from  the  Synoptics, 
but  even  the  opposite  procedure  occasionally 
obtains.  Thus,  in  dealing  with  the  relation 
of  Jesus  to  the  problem  of  social  service, 
Professor  Peabody  makes  his  initial  appeal 
148 


KNOWING    WHAT    JESUS    TAUGHT 

to  the  Fourth  Gospel  and  then  sustains  its 
position  on  the  subject  by  drawing  on  the 
other  three  Gospels.^  Obviously  the  effect  of 
this  indiscriminate  use  of  the  four  Gospels 
must  be  to  introduce  an  element  of  uncer- 
tainty and  confusion  into  every  conclusion 
the  authors  reach,  leaving  us  with  views  on 
the  social  question  which  are  supposed  to 
represent  Jesus,  but  which  in  many  instances 
illustrate  only  the  genius  of  the  authors  in 
shaping  social  doctrines  out  of  Gospel  ma- 
terial. 

But  if  we  are  to  approximate  knowledge  of 
what  Jesus  taught  on  the  social  question,  the 
prerequisite  of  resorting  solely  to  the  Syn- 
optics for  our  proof-texts  must  be  fulfilled. 
And  this  leads  us  directly  to  a  third  impor- 
tant prerequisite. 

Even  in  our  use  of  the  Synoptics  caution 
and  care  must  be  exercised.  For  while  they 
have  so  much  in  common  as  to  justify  their 
grouping  under  this  convenient  title  they  yet 
reveal  points  of  difference  no  less  noteworthy 
than  the  resemblances.     Of  this  we  have  al- 

1 F.   G.  Peabody:    "Jesus  Christ   and  the  Social  Ques- 
tion," pp.  76  et  seq- 

149 


THE    LIFE    OF    JESUS 

ready  had  hints  in  preceding  studies  showing 
how  differently  the  same  story  has  been  re- 
ported by  all  three  evangelists.  Hence  one 
is  forced  to  ask  in  which  one  of  these  varying 
forms  did  Jesus  express  himself?  Which  of 
the  three  represents  the  original  utterance 
and  how  shall  the  changes  in  the  other  two 
versions  be  explained!  Or,  perchance,  is  the 
original  only  approximated,  the  text  as  it 
appears  showing  signs  of  addition  or  omis- 
sion? What  of  the  passages  in  Luke  that 
have  no  parallel  in  either  of  the  other  two 
Gospels  ?  One  has  only  to  ask  such  questions 
as  these  to  realize  at  once  that  it  is  by 
no  means  invariably  certain  what  Jesus 
taught  and  that  among  the  prerequisites  for 
deciding  the  matter  particular  weight  must 
be  attached  to  careful  and  comparative  es- 
timates of  the  Synoptic  material. 

Once  more  we  must  take  cognizance  of 
manuscripts  and  papyri  fragments  discovered 
since  1885,  the  year  in  which  the  "revised" 
version  of  the  New  Testament  was  published. 
For  these  discoveries  have  modified  long- 
established  views  on  important  points  con- 
nected with  the  life  and  teaching  of  Jesus. 
150 


KNOWING    WHAT    JESUS    TAUGHT 

Conspicuous  among  these  recent  supplemen- 
tary sources  of  information  is  the  Oxyrhyn- 
cus  (Behuera,  in  Egypt)  papyrus  fragment 
written  in  Greek,  discovered  in  1897,  and 
antedating  the  earliest  extant  Greek  manu- 
scripts by  one  hundred  years.  This  papyrus 
contains  eight  '^ sayings"  of  Jesus,  four  of 
which  are  missing  in  our  Gospels,  while 
three  of  the  remaining  four  give  us  familiar 
sayings  of  Jesus  in  form  perhaps  older  than 
those  that  appear  in  our  Gospels.  The  eighth 
saying  has  been  almost  entirely  obliterated. 
Without  pausing  to  comment  on  these  sen- 
tences let  it  suffice  if  they  be  now  merely  re- 
produced : 

1.  .  .  .  and  thou  shalt  see  clearly  to 
cast  out  the  mote  that  is  in  thy  brother 's  eye. 

2.  Jesus  saith,  except  ye  fast  to  the  world 
ye  shall  in  nowise  find  the  Kingdom  of  God, 
and  except  ye  keep  the  Sabbath  ye  shall  not 
see  the  Father. 

3.  Jesus  saith,  I  stood  in  the  midst  of  the 
world  and  in  the  flesh  was  I  seen  of  them,  and 
I  found  all  men  drunken  and  none  found  I 
athirst  among  them,  and  my  soul  grieveth 

11  151 


THE    LIFE    OF    JESUS 

over  the  sons  of  men,  because  they  are  blind 
in  their  heart. 

4.  .    .    .    poverty    .    .    . 

5.  Jesus  saith,  wherever  there  are  .  .  . 
and  there  is  one  alone  I  am  with  him.  Kaise 
the  stone  and  there  thou  shalt  find  me,  cleave 
the  wood  and  there  am  I. 

6.  Jesus  saith,  a  prophet  is  not  acceptable 
in  his  own  country,  neither  doth  a  physician 
work  cures  upon  them  that  know  him. 

7.  Jesus  saith,  a  city  built  upon  the  top 
of  a  hill  and  established  can  neither  fall  nor 
be  hid. 

8.  .    .    .    hearest    .    .    .  one  ear    .    .    . 

No  less  noteworthy  is  the  Syriac  version 
of  the  four  Gospels,  discovered  in  1892  on 
Mount  Sinai  by  Mrs.  Agnes  Lewis  and  to 
which  reference  was  made  in  an  earlier  lec- 
ture. This  is  a  palimpsest  manuscript  and 
bears  witness  to  a  rendering  of  the  Gospels 
made  about  250  A.  D.,  or  a  century  prior  to 
the  production  of  the  Sinaitic  manuscript, 
which,  with  the  Vatican  manuscript,  is  the 
oldest  extant  Greek  version  of  the  New  Tes- 
tament. Contemporary  scholarship  has 
152 


KNOWING    WHAT    JESUS    TAUGHT 

found  tliis  palimpsest  of  first-class,  impor- 
tance as  a  witness  to  Jesus'  life  and  teach- 
ing. 

Another  important  prerequisite  for  know- 
ing what  Jesus  taught  is  acquaintance  with 
the  then  current  conceptions  of  the  world, 
seen  and  unseen. 

Precisely  as  one  must  know  Elizabethan 
England  to  understand  Shakspere,  so  one 
must  needs  have  acquaintance  with  Herodian 
Palestine  to  understand  Jesus.  Not,  indeed, 
that  such  knowledge  fully  explains  him.  For, 
while  he  was  by  no  means  independent  of 
heredity  and  environment,  account  must  also 
be  taken  of  the  genius  of  Jesus,  his  power  to 
transcend  these  agencies.  Witness,  for  exam- 
ple, his  perception  and  revelation  of  the  in- 
finite significance  attaching  to  each  human 
life,  even  the  humblest  and  lowest;  his  grasp 
on  that  morality  of  the  spirit  which  marked 
an  advance  upon  the  Law  and  the  Prophets. 

How  radically  different  was  the  thought- 
world  in  which  Jesus  moved  from  that  famil- 
iar to  us.  The  ideas  of  law,  evolution,  mon- 
ism, that  characterize  our  modern  theory  of 
153 


THE    LIFE    OF    JESUS 

the  universe,  these  had  no  place  in  the  world- 
view  of  Jesus.  He  thought  of  the  world  as 
a  three-story  structure  patterned  after  the 
tabernacle,^  fiat-made,  static  and  dualistic  to 
the  extent  that  Satan,  though  subordinate  to 
Yahweh,  yet  participated  in  the  government 
of  human  affairs.  By  reason  of  this  radical 
difference  in  the  two  cosmologies,  the  one 
fundamentally  ''Ptolemaic,"  the  other  **Co- 
pernican,"  there  exists  a  corresponding  dif- 
ference in  the  theologies  developed  out  of 
them ;  for  every  theology  is  rooted  in  a  cos- 
mology. Consequently  in  endeavoring  to  un- 
derstand the  teachings  of  Jesus  due  impor- 
tance must  be  attached  to  the  prerequisite  re- 
lating to  his  Weltanschauung. 

To  appreciate  the  importance  of  the  pre- 
requisite, recall  the  use  Jesus  makes  of  the 
terms  Heaven,  Hell,  Kingdom  of  God,  Para- 
dise, everlasting  punishment,  Satan,  end  of 
the  world.  Here  is  a  group  of  theological 
terms,  to  each  of  which  very  definite  mean- 
ing was  attached  in  the  first  century  in  Pal- 
estine. We  must,  therefore,  be  on  our  guard 
lest  we  put  a  modern  construction  upon  them 

^Exod.  26. 

154 


KNOWING    WHAT    JESUS    TAUGHT 

and  so  misinterpret  the  escliatology  of  Jesus 
with  which  his  ethical  teaching  was  often 
bound  up.  Take,  for  instance,  the  term 
Heaven.  This,  according  to  the  Jewish  be- 
lief inherited  by  Jesus,  was  applied  to  a  par- 
ticular extra-mundane  place,  situated  above 
the  firmament,  the  abode  only  of  God  and  his 
angels,  Enoch  and  Elijah.  Not  till  after  his 
resurrection,  the  records  tell  us,  did  Jesus 
enter  Heaven.  Thither  he  went  from  Para- 
dise, that  section  of  Sheol  to  which  all  good 
people  departed  at  death.  Hence  the  remark 
of  Jesus  to  the  repentent  thief  on  the  cross, 
"This  day  shalt  thou  be  with  me  in  Para- 
dise." The  other  section  of  Sheol  was  Hell, 
a  place  of  torment  reserved  for  the  wicked, 
as  we  learn  from  the  story  of  Dives  and 
Lazarus  in  Luke's  Gospel.  The  term  King- 
dom of  God  signified  not  only  an  inner  spir- 
itual condition,  but  also  an  external  order  of 
society,  to  be  miraculously  established  on 
earth  in  the  generation  to  which  Jesus  be- 
longed and  in  which  only  they  who  possessed 
purity  of  heart  and  a  consecrated  will  could 
dwell.  Sayings  there  are  which  show  that 
Jesus  shared  the  popular  political  or  regal 
155 


THE    LIFE    OF    JESUS 

conception  of  the  coming  Kingdom/  although 
his  immediate  interest  was  obviously  in  its 
ethical  and  spiritual  aspect.  Not  once  did 
he  set  himself  in  opposition  to  the  popular 
expectation,  or  discourage  belief  in  it.  Of 
many  of  his  parables  is  it  the  motif,^  and 
bound  up  with  it  are  his  terrorizing  thoughts 
on  future  punishment  as  exemplified  by  the 
familiar  passages  in  the  thirteenth  and  twen- 
ty-fifth chapters  of  Matthew's  Gospel.  Even 
if  these  imply  eternal  spiritual  suffering,  the 
duration  thereof  is  to  tally  with  the  blessed 
future  life  of  the  righteous.  To  say  that 
these  passages  are  not  authentic,  that  the 
grim  endings  we  find  in  certain  parables  are 
' '  the  work  of  a  later  hand, "  is  to  affirm  that 
for  which  there  is  no  valid  warrant.  No- 
where does  Jesus  controvert  the  current  doc- 
trines of  the  hereafter.  Not  even  the  Sermon 
on  the  Mount  is  free  from  the  forbidding  fea- 
tures of  the  local  eschatology.^ 

We  cannot  arbitrarily  preserve  the  first 
half  of  a  verse  that  is  purely  ethical  in  con- 

^Toy:     "Judaism  and  Christianity,"  p.  342. 

"Matt.   13  :  24,  30,   38,  42,   47,  50;    8:6;   Luke  16  :  25. 

•Matt.  5  :  22,  29,  30;  7  :  13,  14,  22. 

156 


KNOWING    WHAT    JESUS    TAUGHT 

tent  and  reject  the  last  half  which  is  escha- 
tological  and  overshoots  the  ethical  mark.  To 
be  sure,  the  eschatology  of  the  Gospels  cannot 
be  made  "the  master-key  of  their  meaning," 
yet  no  impartial  study  of  the  Synoptics  can 
evade  the  fact  that  many  an  ethical  teaching 
of  Jesus  has  an  eschatological  color  and  char- 
acter that  can  no  more  be  dissociated  from 
the  ethical  element  than  the  color  from  the 
form  of  an  orange.  The  two  are  distinct  but 
inseparable. 

It  were,  indeed,  a  sorry  misunderstanding 
of  the  record  to  see  in  Jesus  "merely  a  He- 
brew enthusiast  announcing  a  Utopian 
dream, ' '  yet  the  truth  remains  that  there  are 
maxims  even  in  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount 
"based  on  an  interim  ethics  adapted  to  a 
transitory  world.  "^  Undoubtedly  Matthew 
Arnold  expressed  a  wise  canon  of  criticism 
when  he  said,  "Jesus  above  the  heads  of  his 
reporters,"  but  from  this  we  are  not  to  infer 
that  "the  vein  of  eschatological  allusion" 
which  runs  through  the  Gospels  betrays  in- 

*  This  paragraph  was  inserted  as  the  book  passed  through 
the  press,  the  quoted  passages  referring  to  an  article  by 
Prof.  Peabody  in  the  Harvard  Theological  Beview,  April, 
1913,  p.  136. 

157 


THE    LIFE    OF    JESUS 

variably  'Hlie  preconceptions  of  the  evan- 
gelists." Again  and  again  must  we  believe 
that  ' '  it  reveals  the  Teacher 's  mind, ' '  ^  that 
he  frankly  urged  men  to  arrange  their  lives 
with  reference  to  the  approaching  end  of  the 
world.  In  other  words,  while  it  is  true  that 
in  his  teachings  Jesus  transcended  the 
thought  of  his  age,  many  of  his  ethical  ut- 
terances indicate  he  was  also  the  child  of  his 
age  and  that  he  felt  no  incompatibility  in 
presenting  his  message  now  with  and  now 
without  eschatological  relation. 

I,  for  one,  then,  cannot  endorse  the  position 
of  President  King  of  Oberlin  College  in  his 
recent  work  on  "The  Ethics  of  Jesus."  He 
declares  that  all  considerations  of  the  escha- 
tological ideas  of  Jesus  must  be  shut  out 
when  considering  his  ethical  teaching.  But 
what  an  immense  difference  it  makes  in  our 
estimate  of  Jesus'  teaching  whether  or  not 
he  urged  men  to  strive  for  righteous  living 
because  their  reward  would  be  great  and  to 
refrain  from  evil  lest  they  be  cast  into  the 
fire  that  is  never  extinguished !  How  can  we 
determine  the  ethical  attitude  of  Jesus  ex- 

•  See  for  example  Matt.  6  :  19,  20,  25,  34. 
158 


KNOWING    WHAT    JESUS    TAUGHT 

cept  as  we  take  account  of  his  escliatology  ? 
If  we  deny  he  spoke  the  gruesome  sentiments 
found  at  the  close  of  certain  verses  in  the 
Synoptics,  no  canon  of  criticism  will  permit 
us  to  affirm  that  he  uttered  only  those  moral 
precepts  with  which  these  verses  begin. 
Clearly,  then,  before  we  can  hope  to  know 
what  Jesus  taught  we  need  to  know  some- 
thing of  the  eschatology  he  shared  with  his 
fellow-Jews. 

Every  intelligent  reader  of  the  New  Testa- 
ment and  more  especially  of  the  Epistles  and 
Acts,  has  observed  evidences  of  rivalry  and 
party-spirit  in  the  primitive  Christian  church. 
Parties  were  formed  bearing  rival  names — 
Cephas,  Apollos,  Paul,  Christ.  Among  the 
causes  of  division  was  difference  of  opinion 
as  to  the  scope  of  Gospel  propaganda.  Was 
the  message  of  Jesus  intended  only  for  Jews 
or  for  Gentiles  also?  On  this  issue,  which 
was  still  debated  at  the  time  the  Gospels  were 
written,  the  authors  take  sides.  And  since 
it  was  but  natural  that  sympathy  for  one  or 
another  of  the  two  sides  in  the  controversy 
would  influence  the  transmission  of  Jesus' 
message,  a  prerequisite  for  deciding  what  he 
159 


THE    LIFE    OF    JESUS 

taught  will  be  a  taking  into  account  the  fact 
that  there  was  a  division  in  the  church,  that 
the  Gospel  writers  took  sides  and  in  so  doing 
tended  to  report  sayings  of  Jesus  in  terms  of 
their  respective  sympathies.  Thus,  for  ex- 
ample, in  the  tenth  chapter  of  Matthew's  Gos- 
pel Jesus  is  reported  as  charging  his  disci- 
ples not  to  go  to  the  Samaritans  and  Gentiles, 
but  only  to  the  Jews.  But  on  turning  to 
Luke 's  Gospel  we  find  no  such  restriction  en- 
joined. On  the  contrary,  the  message  is  that 
the  disciples  should  carry  the  Gospel  to  all 
the  nations.  Must  we  not  conclude  that  in 
these  two  passages  we  see  the  work  of  a 
"Judaizing"  and  of  a  ''Gentilizing"  editor, 
each  of  whom  in  his  own  way,  supplemented 
what  was  perhaps  the  original  remark  of 
Jesus,  *'Go  ye  forth  and  preach  the  gospel"? 
For,  if  we  may  judge  from  what  we  read  in 
the  seventh  chapter  of  the  earliest  of  the 
Gospels,^  Jesus  went  wherever  he  had  oppor- 
tunity to  preach  and  would  have  his  disciples 
do  likewise,  raising  no  question  whatever  as 
to  race,  class,  or  creed.  The  only  question 
with  him  seems  to  have  been  one  of  time,  i.  e., 

» Luke  24  :  47. 

160 


KNOWING    WHAT    JESUS    TAUGHT 

whether  the  disciples  would  have  time  to  do 
more  than  visit  ^'the  cities  of  Israel  before 
the  Son  of  Man  shall  be  come."^  Jesus  had 
said  to  them  that  there  were  ' '  some  standing 
here  who  shall  not  taste  of  death  till  they  see 
the  Son  of  Man  coming  in  his  Kingdom,  "^ 
showing  once  more  the  influence  of  eschato- 
logical  thought,  determining  his  decision 
as  to  the  limits  of  missionary  journey- 
ings.  And  herein  all  three  Gospels  are 
again  agreed.  Similarly  when  judging  the 
harsh  treatment  which  both  Matthew  and 
Mark  report  Jesus  to  have  accorded  the 
Syro-Phoenician  woman  and  which  is  wholly 
wanting  in  Luke's  gospel,^  we  must  ask 
whether  we  have  not  here  again  a  case  in 
which  the  prerequisite  we  are  considering 
must  be  remembered.  In  other  words,  did 
not  Judaizing  editors  reproduce,  with  pro- 
nounced partisan  feeling,  the  original  narra- 
tive of  a  Gentile  woman  who  sought  help  from 
Jesus  for  her  child?  And  did  not  Luke  omit 
the  story  from  his  version  because  of  his  Gen- 
tile sympathies?    Such  questions  are  typical 

^  Matt.  10  :  23. 

=  Matt".  16  :  28 ;   Mark  9:1;   Luke  9  :  27. 

'Matt.    15  :  22;    Mark   7  :  25. 

161 


THE    LIFE    OF    JESUS 

of  the  kind  we  must  ask  again  and  again  in 
our  reading  of  tlie  Synoptics,  in  order  tliat 
we  may  beware  of  ascribing  to  Jesns  state- 
ments wliicli,  as  they  stand,  reflect  partisan- 
ship in  bis  biographers. 

Just  here  let  me  interpose  a  word  concern- 
ing a  curious  delusion  entertained  by  many 
radicals,  to  the  effect  that  if  only  they  were 
''orthodox"  they  could  leave  these  pre- 
requisites severely  alone  and  come  into  im- 
mediate knowledge  of  what  Jesus  taught! 
But,  for  this  seemingly  comforting  assump- 
tion there  is  no  warrant  whatever.  The  fact 
is  that  modern  orthodox  scholarship  repudi- 
ates the  notion  that  one  has  only  to  ' '  bow  the 
head"  and  ''reverently  transcend"  every  dif- 
ficulty one  encounters.  The  foremost  ortho- 
dox New  Testament  scholar  of  the  last  cen- 
tury in  England  was  the  lamented  Congrega- 
tionalist,  Edwin  A.  Abbott,  author  of  the 
article  "Gospels"  in  the  ninth  edition  of  the 
"  Encyclopasdia  Britannica."  Eef erring  to 
discrepancies  and  contradictions  in  Gospel 
accounts  of  Jesus'  teachings,  he  declared  that 
these  are  not  to  be  treated  in  any  pious  and 
cowardly  fashion,  but  rather  to  be  faced  and 
162 


KNOWING    WHAT    JESUS    TAUGHT 

investigated  frankly  and  fearlessly,  in  the 
spirit  of  entire  readiness  to  adjust  ourselves 
to  the  results  whatever  they  may  be.  In  this 
noble  and  inspiring  attitude  Dr.  Abbott  has 
the  support  of  many  another  foreign  scholar 
within  and  without  the  Congregational 
Church — writers  who  hold  with  him  that 
there  are  real  difficulties  attending  the  ques- 
tion of  the  ethics  of  Jesus,  that  we  should  ex- 
pect to  find  them,  considering  the  mode  in 
which  the  Gospels  were  compiled,  and  that 
the  only  ''way  out"  is  the  way  of  reverent 
and  critical  scholarship.  Among  these  rep- 
resentatives of  orthodoxy  is  Professor 
Wendt  of  the  University  of  Heidelberg,  a 
Lutheran  in  religion.  His  little  brochure  on 
the  life  of  Jesus  makes  it  clear  that  to  be  or- 
thodox is  no  guarantee  of  escape  from  Gos- 
pel difficulties,  and  that  we  must  endeavor  to 
determine  exactly  what  Jesus  taught  in  pre- 
cisely the  same  way  that  we  try  to  decide 
what  Plato  taught,  applying  to  the  Gospels 
''the  same  critical  methods  we  apply  to  the 
Dialogues. ' ' 

Here  in  the  United  States  are  independent 
Presbyterians,  like  Professor  McGiffert;  in- 
163 


THE    LIFE    OF    JESUS 

dependent  Baptists,  like  Professor  Foster; 
independent  Congregationalists,  like  Profes- 
sor Bacon;  independent  Episcopalians,  like 
Professor  Nash;  all  of  whom  assent  to  the 
proposition  that  to  know  just  what  Jesus 
taught  is  a  problem  fraught  with  difficulties 
from  which  there  is  no  escape,  no  matter  how 
''orthodox"  one  may  be. 

We  have  thus  far  considered  six  prerequis- 
ites for  knowing  just  what  Jesus  taught. 
They  all  alike  concern  the  Gospel  records  or 
their  writers.  First,  we  must  have  some  ac- 
quaintance with  the  methods  and  results  of 
the  higher  criticism  because  these  help  us 
over  difficulties  relating  to  variations  and 
discrepancies  in  the  recorded  teachings  of 
Jesus.  Second,  we  must  choose  the  Synop- 
tics rather  than  the  Fourth  Gospel  as  our 
source  of  information,  because  the  latter 
aims  principally,  as  we  have  seen,  at  present- 
ing a  theory  of  the  person  of  Jesus  and  uses 
the  Synoptic  material  as  a  means  to  that  end. 
Third,  we  must  take  account  of  differences 
^in  the  Synoptics  where  they  occur  in  reports 
of  one  and  the  same  incident  or  saying  of 
Jesus.  Fourth,  manuscripts  and  papyri 
164 


KNOWING    WHAT    JESUS    TAUGHT 

fragments,  discovered  since  the  authorized 
and  revised  editions  of  the  New  Testament 
(1611  and  1885)  were  published,  must  be 
reckoned  with,  because  from'  these  sources 
considerable  fresh  information  has  been  de- 
rived relating  to  what  Jesus  taught.  Fifth, 
we  must  have  some  knowledge  of  the  cosmo- 
logical  and  theological  ideas  which  Jesus 
shared  with  his  Jewish  contemporaries,  be- 
cause much  of  his  teaching  is  bound  up  with 
these  beliefs.  Sixth,  we  must  keep  in  mind, 
as  we  read  the  Gospels,  the  existence  of  two 
parties  in  the  infant  Church,  because  the  Gos- 
pel writers  took  sides  and  their  sympathies 
sometimes  affected  their  report  of  what 
Jesus  said  and  did. 

Passing  now  from  these  prerequisites  to 
another  group,  those  which  concern  the  read- 
ers rather  than  the  records  and  their  writers, 
we  shall  see  that  here  again  certain  condi- 
tions obtain  without  the  fulfilment  of  which 
we  shall  not  only  fail  to  know  just  what  Jesus 
taught,  but,  what  is  worse,  attribute  to  him 
ideas  for  which  he  is  not  in  the  least  respon- 
sible. Permit  me  to  preface  the  considera- 
tion of  these  prerequisites  by  saying  that  if 
165 


THE    LIFE    OF    JESUS 

any  criticism  of  mine  concerning  the  person- 
ality or  teachings  of  Jesus  be  construed  as 
exhibiting  an  inimical  or  iconoclastic  spirit 
they  will  be  misconstrued.  And  it  will  be  in 
regretted  contradiction  to  my  purpose  if  I 
let  slip  a  single  careless  word  that  shall 
wound  the  reverence  of  even  the  most  sensi- 
tive soul. 

First,  then,  in  this  group  is  hanishment 
from  the  reader's  mind  of  preconceptions  as 
to  what  Jesus  taught.  Most  persons,  per- 
haps all  of  us,  are  in  some  measure  victim- 
ized by  prejudices,  predilections,  biases.  We 
come  to  the  Gospels  with  certain  convictions 
touching  the  character  and  contents  of  Jesus ' 
message.  Equipped  with  these  we  read  the 
record  and  spontaneously  accept  as  genuine 
whatever  accords  with  our  preconceptions 
and  promptly  reject  as  spurious  whatever 
fails  to  fall  in  with  them.  A  popular  and 
pernicious  practice  this,  reading  the  Gospels 
and  eliminating,  by  a  sheer  tour  de  force,  all 
that  does  not  measure  up  to  the  complete  and 
faultless  system  of  teaching  attributed  to 
Jesus  at  the  start.  Henry  Ward  Beecher 
once  compared  people  to  a  magnet  that  had 
16G 


KNOWING    WHAT    JESUS    TAUGHT 

been  passed  through  a  dish  of  sand  contain- 
ing iron  filings  and  which,  when  it  emerged, 
was  completely  covered  with  them.  So  peo- 
ple go  through  the  Gospels  and  come  forth 
from  their  reading  bristling  all  over  with 
their  favorite  texts.  All  those  which  were 
out  of  harmony  with  the  predetermined  ideas 
of  what  Jesus  would  teach  were  quietly  ig- 
nored as  ''interpolations"  or  as  "editorial 
glosses."  It  is  related  of  William  Ellery 
Channing,  the  distinguished  Unitarian  di- 
vine, that  whenever  his  pulpit  readings  in- 
cluded the  twenty- third  chapter  of  Matthew's 
Gospel,  he  invariably  lowered  his  voice  at  the 
verse  where  begins  the  series  of  maledictions 
Jesus  pronounced  upon  the  despised  Phari- 
sees. The  words  "woe,  woe  unto  you,  Phari- 
sees," the  preacher  read  with  soft,  modulated 
tones,  surprising  and  disconcerting  his  con- 
gregation. The  saintly  Channing  naively 
disregarded  the  prerequisite  we  are  consid- 
ering. He  approached  the  Gospels  with  the 
preconceived  idea  that  Jesus  could  not  feel 
intense  moral  indignation,  much  less  out- 
right hatred  toward  these  his  ubiquitous  and 
irrepressible  opponents.  Hence,  the  pulpit- 
is 167 


THE    LIFE    OF    JESUS 

readings  were  determined  in  tone  by  the  pre- 
conception. But  if  there  is  any  one  part  of 
the  Gospel  tradition  more  strongly  attested 
than  another,  it  is  that  which  pertains  to 
Jesus  and  his  dealings  with  the  Pharisees. 
Not  once  is  he  reported  as  uttering  a  single 
sympathetic  word  for  them.  Nowhere  is  it 
as  much  as  intimated  that  his  hatred  was  not 
of  them  but  of  their  hypocrisy,  formalism, 
and  craftiness.  None  of  the  New  Testament 
writers  represents  him  as  showing  toward  the 
Pharisees  that  forgiving,  tolerant,  kindly 
spirit  which  he  besought  his  disciples  to  feel 
toward  all  men.  How  many  passages  there 
are,  exhibiting,  on  Jesus '  part,  toward  these 
Pharisees,  a  deep-seated,  bitter  antagonism 
and  intolerance.^  I  hold,  therefore,  that  if 
we  go  to  these  records  with  minds  free  from 
preconception  as  to  what  Jesus  was  and  said, 
w^e  shall  feel  forced  to  confess  that  these  are 
utterances  of  his,  as  well  authenticated  as 
any  parts  of  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount. 

Some  years  ago,  I  was  invited  to  assist 
a  San  Francisco  clergyman  at  his  Sunday 

»Matt.  5  :  20;  16  :  6;  13  :  14  e*  seq.;  Mark  8  :  15;  Luke 
12  :  1;    11  :  39,  42-44. 

168 


KNOWING    WHAT    JESUS    TAUGHT 

morning  service.  He  selected  for  my  scripture 
reading  the  eighteenth  chapter  of  Matthew. 
Pointing  to  the  second  paragraph  of  the  sixth 
verse,  which  reads,  ''It  were  better  for  him 
that  a  millstone  were  hanged  about  his  neck, 
and  that  he  were  drowned  in  the  depths  of  the 
sea,"  he  remarked,  "Jesus  never  said  that, 
please  omit  this  verse. ' '  But  never  yet  have 
I  been  able  to  justify  his  contention  that  the 
sentiment  is  unauthentic.  And  if  this  verse 
be  invalidated,  on  what  warrantable  ground 
shall  any  other  escape  deletion?  The  inci- 
dent illustrates  once  more  the  baneful  prac- 
tice of  approaching  the  record  with  partic- 
ular preconceptions  and  promptly  squaring 
it  with  these  whenever  it  runs  contrary  to 
them.  Now  it  is  quite  true  that  the  Gospels 
ascribe  certain  statements  to  Jesus  which  we 
are  practically  certain  he  never  uttered.  But 
the  reason  for  our  so  believing  is  not  their 
incompatibility  with  a  preconceived  idea  of 
his  character  and  teaching,  but  their  incon- 
sistency with  the  evidence  in  support  of  what 
he  actually  taught.  Such  a  statement,  for  ex- 
ample, is  recorded  in  the  sixteenth  chapter 
of  Mark,  "He  who  believeth  not  shall  be 
169 


THE    LIFE    OF    JESUS 

damned."  "We  reject  this,  not,  however,  be- 
cause it  fails  to  conform  to  a  preconception 
of  Jesus  as  the  ideal  teacher,  but  solely  be- 
cause it  is  missing  in  the  two  earliest  extant 
manuscripts  of  the  Bible.  Part  of  a  narra- 
tive, it  is,  which  formed  no  portion  of  the 
original  Gospel.^  In  Channing  and  the  Cali- 
fornia clergjTuan  we  see  prototypes  of  the 
people  who  first  form  a  mental  picture  of  an 
absolutely  perfect  person  and  then  proceed 
to  find  it  embodied  in  the  Jesus  of  the  Syn- 
optic Gospels.  Whatever  appears  as  irra- 
tional or  unethical  is  at  once  reinterpreted  to 
appear  differently,  or  else  designated  "an 
interpolation,"  or  perchance  as  "an  obvious 
misinterpretation  of  the  evangelists,  steeped 
in  the  superstitions  of  their  time."  Either 
what  is  reported  must  tally  with  the  precon- 
ceived idea  of  the  teacher's  person,  or  be  rel- 
egated to  the  realm  of  the  unauthentic  and 
unwarrantable.  Banishment  of  preconcep- 
tions must  therefore  be  set  down  as  the  prime 
prerequisite  in  the  group  we  are  now  con- 
sidering. 

A  second  prerequisite  for  deciding  what 

» Mark  16  :  9-20. 

170 


KNOWING    WHAT    JESUS    TAUGHT 

Jesus  taught  is  avoidance  of  the  ventrilo- 
quism which  puts  into  the  mouth  of  Jesus 
ideas  that  are  modern  in  origin  and  content. 
We  must  refrain  from  reading  into  the  teach- 
ings of  Jesus  thoughts  wholly  foreign  to  his 
time  and  place  and  for  the  holding  of  which 
he  had  neither  the  necessary  antecedent  edu- 
cation nor  inheritance.  We  take  unethical 
liberties  with  the  records  when  we  interpret 
first-century  statements  to  make  them  ex- 
press twentieth-century  ideas.  Such  crowd- 
ing of  new  meanings  into  old  language  not 
only  creates  confusion  of  thought  but  also 
blocks  all  earnest  effort  to  determine  what 
Jesus  taught.  Take,  for  example,  that  im- 
pressive little  book,  entitled  ''The  Christ 
Ideal,"  written  by  Horatio  Dresser,  an  ex- 
positor of  the  ''New  Thought."  With  sus- 
tained patience  we  read  his  series  of  chap- 
ters, confident  we  shall  come  upon  a  state- 
ment of  that  "ideal"  he  proposed  to  present. 
But  we  are  rewarded,  at  last,  not  with  any 
knowledge  of  the  Christ  ideal  but  only  of 
Mr.  Dresser's  ideal.  For  he  has  made  Jesus 
the  mouthpiece  of  the  message  which  his  own 
"New  Thought"  training  has  worked  out. 
171 


THE    LIFE    OF    JESUS 

What  he  calls  "the  Voice  of  Jesus"  is  really 
his  own  voice  transferred  to  Jesus.  Mr. 
Dresser  has  ignored  this  second  of  the  per- 
sonal prerequisites  for  knowledge  of  what 
Jesus  actually  taught  and  in  consequence  he 
has  produced  a  book  which,  with  all  its  ad- 
mirable features,  leaves  us  confused  and  un- 
satisfied so  far  as  acquaintance  with  Jesus 
and  his  ideal  is  concerned. 

This  criticism  applies  with  equal  force  to 
that  seties  of  brochures  of  which  "In  His 
Steps,"  by  C.  M.  Sheldon,  and  "If  Christ 
Came  to  Chicago, "  by  W.  T.  Stead,  are  types. 
The  avowed  purpose  of  these  authors  was  to 
show  just  what  Jesus  would  do  were  he  to 
return  to  earth  and  find  himself  placed  in 
the  situations  described.  But  what  we  really 
learn  is  what  these  authors  would  do,  acting 
according  to  their  enlightened  conscience. 
They  simply  make  Jesus  the  spokesman  of 
their  own  carefully  thought-out  sociological 
conclusions.  Thus  our  knowledge  of  Jesus  is 
not  furthered  in  the  least,  while  the  unsus- 
pecting spectator,  who  does  not  see  the  ven- 
triloquistic  process,  interprets  what  he  finds 
as  representing  the  thought  of  Jesus. 
172 


KNOWING    WHAT    JESUS    TAUGHT 

In  tlie  same  class  with  this  literature,  that 
takes  no  cognizance  of  the  prerequisites  we 
are  considering,  is  the  so-called  ''Aquarian 
Gospel."  This  is  a  pseudonymous  work  in 
which  the  writer  declares  that  to  him  has 
been  revealed  secret  knowledge  concerning 
Jesus'  teachings  for  which  the  world  hitherto 
was  unprepared.  The  race  has  emerged  from 
"Aries"  and  "Taurus"  and  entered  into 
"Aquarius."  Hence  the  title  of  the  "Gos- 
pel." Its  most  characteristic  chapters  relate 
to  the  pre-"  Christine "  ministry  of  Jesus. 
The  author  has  transferred  from  the  "as- 
tral" records,  to  which  access  has  been 
vouchsafed  him,  an  account  of  the  travels  of 
Jesus  with  the  great  priests  of  India,  Persia, 
Egypt,  and  Greece,  and  the  theosophical 
knowledge  he  acquired  from  them.  Then  fol- 
lows a  series  of  discourses  in  which  the  writ- 
er's occultism  is  put  into  the  mouth  of  Jesus, 
making  him  the  exponent  of  esoteric  systems 
of  belief  wholly  at  variance  with  the  plain, 
exoteric  Judaism  of  his  time.  The  remark- 
able features  of  his  book  are  the  egregious- 
ness  of  its  ventriloquism,  the  story  of  its  as- 
tral origin,  and  the  serious  reception  accorded 
173 


THE    LIFE    OF    JESUS 

it  by  people  whose  intelligence  elsewhere  is 
unquestioned,  notably  the  Congressman  from 
Wyoming,  who  provided  the  ''Gospel"  with 
an  introduction. 

It  seemed  worth  while  to  cite  these  as  typ- 
ical examples  of  an  all  too  common  practice 
because  it  is  on  the  increase.  In  proportion 
as  liberalism  spreads  liberties  are  taken  with 
New  Testament  statements  and  personal  pre- 
conceptions are  given  a  free  rein,  to  the  in- 
jury alike  of  text  and  reader. 

We  see  the  same  popular  and  pernicious 
practice  illustrated  once  more  in  the  case  of 
the  socialist,  who  eagerly  turns  to  the  Gos- 
pels with  the  purpose  of  finding  there  full 
confirmation  of  his  own  social  creed.  He 
quotes  verses  at  random  regardless  of  their 
context  or  intended  meaning,  to  show  that 
Jesus  was  a  Socialist,  a  prophet  of  social  evo- 
lution, his  soul  on  fire  with  class  conscious- 
ness. But  to  construe  the  familiar  utter- 
ances of  Jesus,  ''The  spirit  of  the  Lord  is 
upon  me  to  preach  the  Gospel  to  the  poor"; 
"Woe  unto  you  who  are  rich";  "How  hardly 
shall  they  who  have  riches  enter  the  King- 
dom of  Heaven";  "Blessed  be  ye  poor" — as 
174 


KNOWING    WHAT    JESUS    TAUGHT 

evidences  of  his  Socialism,  is  sheer  distor- 
tion of  the  record.  Nothing  can  be  clearer 
from  an  impartial  miprejudiced  reading  of 
the  Gospels  than  that  Jesus  addressed  him- 
self primaril}^  to  the  individual  heart  and 
conscience.  The  problem  of  changing  eco- 
nomic and  social  conditions,  which  lies  at  the 
heart  of  Socialism,  did  not  concern  him  in 
the  least,  because  he  looked  to  God  for  the 
transformation  of  the  politico-social  order. 
Only  a  little  while,  he  believed,  and  the  King- 
dom of  God  would  be  ushered  in.  Conse- 
quently for  him  the  one,  sole,  vital  issue  of 
the  hour  was  a  changing  of  men 's  hearts  and 
wills,  fitting  them  for  membership  in  the  new 
Kingdom  that  might  come  like  *'a  thief  in 
the  night,"  suddenly,  with  no  warning. 
''Watch,  therefore,  for  ye  know  neither  the 
day  nor  the  hour,"  was  his  solemn  and  prac- 
tical admonition.  He  came  not  to  readjust 
social  conditions,  not  to  attempt  a  reorgani- 
zation of  society  on  untried  economic  princi- 
ples. He  came  solely  to  refine  men's  lives,  to 
quicken  in  each  individual  the  sense  of  his  di- 
vine origin  and  the  infinite  possibilities  for 
moral  progress  inhering  in  each,  even  in  the 
175 


THE    LIFE    OF    JESUS 

very  lowest.  If,  then,  we  would  know  just 
what  Jesus  taught  it  is  clear  that  there  are 
preliminary  conditions  which  must  be  com- 
plied with.  And  these  concern  not  only  the 
records  and  their  authors,  but  also,  and  to 
a  far  more  vital  degree,  ourselves,  the  read- 
ers. And  whatever  difficulties  may  attend 
our  compliance  with  the  former  conditions, 
the  latter  are  wholly  within  our  power  of  ful- 
filment, depending  solely  upon  the  intensity 
and  depth  of  our  desire  to  see  things  as  they 
are  rather  than  as  we  would  wish  them  to  be 
or  as  we  thought,  in  advance,  they  were. 


VI 

THE   CRUCIFIXION 

The  public  ministry  of  Jesus,  according  to 
the  first  three  Gospels,  was  divided  into  two 
main  parts;  the  one  Galilean,  the  other  Ju- 
dean,  the  former  centering  at  Capernaum, 
the  latter  in  Jerusalem;  the  one  extending 
over  a  period  of  eighteen  months,  the  other 
lasting  a  little  over  a  week.  During  his 
northern  ministry  Jesus  came  into  frequent 
conflict  with  the  Pharisees ;  in  the  south  his 
chief  opponents  were  Sadducees.  l^hese  col- 
lisions with  the  two  leading  religious  parties 
of  his  day  culminated  in  the  crucifixion.  Any 
attempt,  therefore,  to  understand  the  tragedy 
of  the  cross,  must  involve  some  knowledge 
of  these  two  parties,  their  distinctive  char- 
acteristics and  functions,  and  the  causes  that 
brought  Jesus  into  conflict  with  them. 

The  Sadducees  were  the  wealthy,  conserva- 
177 


TPIE    LIFE    OF    JESUS 

tive,  aristocratic,  exclusive  party,  the  repre- 
sentatives of  official  piety.  Into  their  hands 
had  been  committed  the  hereditary  privilege 
of  conducting  the  Temple  services.  From 
among  them  the  priests  were  selected.  To 
them  also  was  entrusted  the  judiciary,  hence 
their  closeness  to  the  Eoman  authorities. 

The  Pharisees  represented  the  aristocracy 
of  intellect  and  erudition.  The  synagogue- 
teaching  was  under  their  control.  They  were 
the  exponents  of  unofficial,  or  personal,  piety. 
As  their  name  indicates,  they  were  separat- 
ists, holding  themselves  aloof  from  the 
masses,  priding  themselves  upon  their  punc- 
tilious, uncompromising  devotion  to  ceremo- 
nialism. 

The  Sadducees  stood  squarely  by  the  Pen- 
tateuch alone,  denying  and  rejecting  every 
belief  for  which  the  first  five  books  of  the 
Old  Testament  provided  no  warrant,  beliefs 
derived  from  contact  with  the  Babylonians, 
Persians  and  Greeks  during  centuries  of  Jew- 
ish subjugation  to  these  peoples. 

The  Pharisees,  more  liberally  disposed,  be- 
lieving in  progressive  Judaism,  freely  adop- 
ted and  adapted  these  elements  of  foreign 
178 


THE    CRUCIFIXION 

faith,  including  belief  in  hierarchies  of  angels 
and  of  demons,  in  resurrection  from  the 
dead  and  future  punishment.  The  mass  of 
*'oral"  law,  developed  from  the  Pentateuchal 
legislation,  this  too,  the  Pharisees  endorsed 
and  sustained  as  binding  upon  all  Israelites. 
As  a  class,  they  constituted  the  best  element 
of  the  community;  stern  moralists,  strict 
legalists,  religious  liberalists,  painfully  in- 
sistent upon  obedience  to  the  letter  of  the 
law,  intense  sticklers  for  form,  they  yet  em- 
bodied as  far  as  they  could  the  fundamental 
notion  of  Israel's  holiness  and  so  became 
peculiarly  the  national  party,  the  Puritan 
pillars  of  Judaism. 

But  just  as  there  are  Christians  and  Chris- 
tians, so  there  were  Pharisees  and  Pharisees. 
And  as  all  church  members  are  not  good 
members,  so  all  Pharisees  were  not  good 
Pharisees.  Among  them,  as  among  Chris- 
tians, there  were  **  wolves  in  sheeps'  cloth- 
ing," hypocrites,  extremists,  fanatics,  ultra- 
formalists,  exhibitors  of  the  signs  of  piety, 
while  inwardly  ''full  of  dead  men's  bones 
and  all  uncleanness."  It  was  against  this 
class  of  Pharisees,  rather  than  against  the 
179 


THE    LIFE    OF    JESUS 

party  as  a  whole,  that  Jesus  hurled  his  un- 
tempered  denunciations,  even  as  had  the 
rabbinical  writers  of  the  Talmud  before  him. 
They  distinguished  seven  kinds  of  Pharisees 
and  held  that  only  one  of  these  is  worthy  of 
respect,  the  kind  who  took  Abraham  for  their 
pattern,  who  **do  good  and  delight  in  the 
commandments  of  the  Lord.'*  Be  it  under- 
stood, then,  that  it  was  not  against  the  Phari- 
sees, as  a  class,  that  Jesus  flung  his  merciless 
invectives,  so  much  as  at  these,  the  least  wor- 
thy representatives  of  the  party,  men  who 
decried  spontaneity  in  religion  and  blocked 
the  free  play  of  soul  that  breaks  new  ground 
and  gets  new  visions.  All  three  biographers 
of  Jesus  report  his  offendings  of  these  Phari- 
sees. Mark,  the  earliest  Gospel,  recounts  in 
successive  chapters  a  series  of  occasions  on 
which  they  appear  in  open  hostility  to  Jesus, 
so  that  he  is  constrained  at  last  to  terminate 
further  controversy  by  retiring  to  the  outly- 
ing region  of  Caesarea  Philippi.  He  had  of- 
fended them,  first,  by  associating  with  out- 
casts of  society,  the  dregs  of  the  community, 
the  very  class  from  whom  these  Pharisees 
kept  altogether  aloof,  to  avoid  contamination 
180 


THE    CRUCIFIXION 

and  ceremonial  uncleanness.  Over  against 
their  aristocratic,  legalistic  exclusiveness 
stood  the  democratic,  unrestrained  inclusive- 
ness  of  Jesus,  the  breadth  and  warmth  of 
which  we  are  helped  to  understand  if  we  im- 
agine some  bishop  or  other  church  dignitary 
living  on  terms  of  open  friendship  and  hos- 
pitality with  the  keeper  of  some  low  resort. 

When  these  Pharisees  criticized  Jesus  for 
the  company  he  kept,  his  simple  answer  was, 
' '  Not  they  who  are  healthy  but  they  who  are 
sick  need  a  physician."  Like  all  great  souls 
before  his  time  and  since,  Jesus  estimated 
men  not  according  to  their  wealth,  or  social 
position,  not  by  the  residence-district  in 
which  they  happened  to  live,  nor  again,  by 
their  ancestry.  He  looked  upon  them  simply 
as  children  of  a  universal  Father  and  as  pos- 
sessing infinite  possibilities  for  improvement. 

A  second  instance  of  his  giving  offence  to 
the  Pharisees  was  the  granting  permission  to 
his  disciples  ''to  pluck  the  ears  of  corn  on 
the  Sabbath  day, ' '  and  his  own  readiness,  on 
that  day,  to  heal  the  sick.  But  in  his  reply 
to  the  censures  heaped  upon  him  Jesus 
proved  that  he  knew  the  Law  more  fully  than 
181 


THE    LIFE    OF    JESUS 

his  opponents.  This  inevitably  made  them 
feel  small  and  cheap  and  thus  aggravated  the 
antagonism  they  already  felt  toward  him. 
The  plain  truth  was  that  never  at  any  time 
had  Jesus  violated  a  Sabbath  ordinance  or 
permitted  his  disciples  to  do  so.  The  Phari- 
sees had  failed  to  take  note  of  emergencies 
for  which  the  Law  makes  allowance. 
When  faint  with  hunger  on  the  Sabbath  a 
man  may  pluck  ears  of  corn.  And  all  cases 
of  critical  illness  might  be  legitimately  cared 
for  on  the  Sabbath.  Thus  did  Jesus  prove 
that  he  came  not,  as  the  Pharisees  held,  to 
destroy  the  Law,  but  to  fulfil  or  carry  out  its 
injunctions.  When  they  came  to  him  asking 
for  *'a  sign"  whereby  to  demonstrate  the  di- 
vine origin  of  his  power,  Jesus  refused. 
When  they  explained  the  cures  he  had 
wrought  as  the  work  of  Beelzebub,  the  prince 
of  devils,  he  confronted  their  theory  with  the 
searching  question,  ''Can  Satan  drive  out 
Satan  ?"^  When  they  accused  him  of  blas- 
phemy because  he  presumed  to  forgive  sins, 
he  reminded  them  of  the  then  accepted  belief 

1  All  diseases  were  supposed  to  be  due  to  indwelling 
demons. 

182 


THE    CRUCIFIXION 

that  all  sickness  is  the  result  of  sin  and  a 
form  of  punishment,  and  that,  consequently, 
to  say  ^'thy  sins  are  forgiven  thee"  is  only 
tantamount  to  "take  up  thy  bed  and  walk." 

When  they  saw  his  disciples  sitting  at 
meat  without  having  first  washed  their 
hands,  they  called  his  attention  to  this  viola- 
tion of  the  Law.  But  he,  perceiving  the  ex- 
ternalism  of  their  piety,  promptly  assured 
them  that  in  their  passionate  devotion  to  the 
traditions  of  men  they  had  set  at  naught  the 
commandments  of  God.  And  in  order  that 
there  might  be  no  misunderstanding  of  their 
meaning  he  added,  **Not  that  which  goeth 
into  the  mouth  defileth  a  man;  but  that 
which  Cometh  out  of  the  mouth,  this  defileth 
a  man." 

The  immediate  and  inevitable  effect  of 
these  successive  encounters  was  to  intensify 
the  already  bitter  antagonism  of  the  Phari- 
sees toward  Jesus  and  provoke  them  to  the 
point  of  scheming  to  undermine  his  ministry. 
On  the  other  hand,  the  effect  of  the  contro- 
versies upon  Jesus  was  to  convince  him  that 
a  crisis  had  been  reached,  that  to  continue 
preaching  and  healing  in  the  province  of 
13  183 


THE    LIFE    OF    JESUS 

Galilee,  where  tlie  Pharisees  were  particu- 
larly in  evidence,  would  be  futile  and  that  the 
time  had  come  for  him  to  go  to  the  head- 
quarters of  Judaism  and  there  preach  his 
message  among  its  official  representatives. 
During  his  brief  stay  at  Caesarea-Philippi  he 
decides  upon  this  course,  abandoning  his 
Galilean  ministry  for  the  untried  territory  of 
Judea,  confiding  to  his  disciples  the  intuition 
that  grave  danger  and  tribulation  await  him. 

Before  we  follow  him  to  Jerusalem  let  us 
pause  to  note  the  fact  that  while  none  of 
these  collisions  with  the  Pharisees,  nor  all 
of  them  together,  could  have  precipitated  a 
crucifixion,  yet  there  can  be  no  question  that 
they  must  be  counted  as  a  remote  and  indi- 
rect cause  of  the  tragedy  of  the  Cross. 

Whether  Jesus  rode  or  walked  the  two 
short  miles  to  Jerusalem  from  Bethany, 
where  he  had  stopped  en  route,  is  a  question 
of  little  or  no  importance.  But  it  is  a  ques- 
tion of  primary  importance  whether  or  not 
his  entry  was  a  triumphal  one,  amid  Messi- 
anic acclaim  and  the  cry,  ''Hosanna!  Save 
us,  thou  Son  of  David ! ' '  For  if  it  was  a  tri- 
umphal entry  it  would  mean  that  Jesus  had 
184 


THE    CRUCIFIXION 

turned  his  back  upon  his  own  ethical  and 
spiritual  conception  of  the  Messiahship  and 
was  now  championing  the  popular  political 
idea  of  the  office.  It  would  mean  that  he  who 
had  persistently  stood,  and  in  the  face  of  con- 
stant misunderstanding,  for  the  prophetic 
idea  of  the  Messiah  as  suggested  by  what  we 
read  in  the  fifty-third  and  sixtieth  chapters 
of  Isaiah,  had  now  headed  a  royalist  move- 
ment and  was  prepared  to  lead  a  political  in- 
surrection. Yet  nothing  is  clearer  than  that 
the  Synoptic  Gospels  nowhere  present  Jesus 
as  an  exponent  of  popular  Messianic  specula- 
tion and  enthusiasm.  Equally  clear  it  is  that 
Jesus  felt  he  must  in  some  way  associate  him- 
self with  the  popular  demand  for  a  De- 
liverer and  regard  himself  as  the  Messiah. 
For  in  those  days,  in  Palestine,  the  Mes- 
sianic hope  stood  in  the  same  relation 
to  popular  sentiment  that  home-rule  does 
to  the  Irish  peasantry.  And  precisely 
as  a  Gladstone  could  not  have  ignored  the 
latter,  so  Jesus  could  not  have  disregarded 
the  former.  But  just  what  he  believed 
about  himself  in  relation  to  the  Messiah- 
iship,  just  what  the  precise  content  of  the 
185 


THE    LIFE    OF    JESUS 

word  Messiah  was  for  him,  we  cannot  teU. 
The  data  are  insufficient  to  warrant  definite 
assertion.  Modern  scholarship  forbids  indul- 
gence in  precise  description  and  intimates 
that  perpetual  uncertainty  must  attach  to 
much  of  our  thought  upon  it.  On  the  other 
hand,  no  doubt  whatsoever  gathers  about  the 
contribution  Jesus  made  to  the  traditional 
Messianic  conception.  He  reinterpreted  the 
national  hope  in  ethical  terms.  He  regarded 
himself  as  the  Messiah  in  a  higher  sense  than 
that  of  a  political  Deliverer.  His  function 
was  not  to  destroy  Roman  oppression  but 
human  sin,  wherever  it  obtained,  in  order 
that  the  greatest  possible  number  of  men  and 
women  might  enjoy  participation  in  the  King- 
dom of  God  when  it  should  come.  Side  by 
side  with  his  ethical  interpretation  of  the 
Messiahship  stood  the  inherited  belief  in  the 
good  time  coming  when  from  on  high  there 
would  be  established  a  new  social  order  to 
take  the  place  of  the  existing  one.  "Whether 
he  expected  to  be  the  agent  of  the  divine  act 
of  transformation  and  usher  in  the  new  king- 
dom is,  and  perhaps  always  will  be,  an  open 
question.  But,  be  this  as  it  may,  it  was  as 
186 


THE    CRUCIFIXION 

an  ethical  and  spiritual  Deliverer  that  Jesus 
meant  to  minister  to  his  fellowmen,  caring 
supremely  for  this  transcendent  interpreta- 
tion of  the  Messiah  and  holding  the  inherited 
political  conception  all  the  while  in  abeyance. 
Be  doubtful  what  may  concerning  the  de- 
tails of  his  thought  on  the  subject,  this  con- 
ception of  his  mission  stands  clearly  forth  in 
the  record,  and,  above  all,  in  the  passage 
which  reports  the  confession  he  made  to  his 
disciples  that  he  regarded  himself  as  the 
Messiah,  but  besought  them  to  tell  no  man. 
For  it  was  certain  to  be  misunderstood,  or, 
if  his  meaning  were  grasped,  it  would  have 
been  ridiculed  and  made  a  matter  of  sport 
and  mockery  by  a  people  enamored  of  the  po- 
litical conception  of  the  office  and  impatient 
of  any  other,  even  one  that  was  ethical  and 
spiritual,  in  content.  And  the  fact  that  the 
Gospels  present  this  non-political,  non-pop- 
ular interpretation  of  the  Messiahship  would 
seem  to  prove,  more  effectively  perhaps  than 
any  other  argument,  the  historicity  of  Jesus. 
Someone  must  have  conceived  and  imperson- 
ated the  ethical  conception  of  the  office  as 
against  the  popular,  political  idea,  to  have 
187 


THE    LIFE    OP   JESUS 

made  possible  the  portraiture  the  Gospels 
present.  At  the  same  time  it  is  apparent 
that  the  biographers  of  Jesus  regarded  him 
as  the  expected  Messiah,  and  wrote  the  story 
of  his  life  from  the  standpoint  of  this  pre- 
conception. Hence  it  does  not  surprise  us  to 
find  all  three  reporting  a  triumphal  entry 
into  Jerusalem.  Moreover,  holding  the  belief 
that  the  Old  Testament  foreshadowed  Mes- 
siah's career  and  finding  in  Zechariah's 
prophecy  the  words,  ''behold  thy  King  Com- 
eth riding  upon  an  ass  and  upon  a  colt,  the 
foal  of  an  ass,"  these  biographers  promptly 
applied  the  passage  to  Jesus.  And  since 
there  was  no  other  occasion  upon  which  he 
could  have  thus  ridden  upon  an  ass  except 
on  this  journey  to  Jerusalem,  the  quotation 
found  apt  application  to  this  incident.  Given 
the  premises  on  which  the  writers  based  their 
study  of  Jesus'  life  and  the  conclusion  they 
reached  follows  logically  enough.  Their  syl- 
logism ran:  The  Old  Testament  portrays 
Messiah's  career.  Jesus  is  the  Messiah. 
Therefore  the  Old  Testament  foreshadowed 
Jesus'  career.  It  does  not  surprise  us  then 
to  find  that,  in  harmony  with  this  tendency  to 
188 


THE    CRUCIFIXION 

see  prophetic  intimations  of  Messiah's  life 
in  the  Old  Testament,  the  whole  course  of 
Jesus'  experience  from  birth  to  death  was 
cast  into  this  frame.  To  be  sure,  the  appli- 
cation of  scripture  passages  was  often  made 
in  entire  disregard  of  their  original  sense. 
And  many  a  deficiency  in  the  recollections  of 
what  Jesus  did  was  supplied  by  appeal  to 
passages  that  seemed  to  relate  to  Jesus'  life. 
As  an  index  of  the  astounding  results  to 
which  this  practice  sometimes  led,  take  the 
account  of  Jesus'  entry  into  Jerusalem,  as 
reported  in  the  Gospel  of  Matthew.  Here 
Jesus  is  represented  as  riding  on  two  ani- 
mals, Mark  and  Luke  mentioning  but  one. 
The  first  Evangelist,  however,  explains  the 
reason  for  what  he  reports.  It  is  that  the 
saying  might  be  fulfilled  which  was  spoken 
by  the  prophet: 

Behold,  thy  King  cometh  unto  thee: 
Lowly  and  riding  upon  an  ass, 
And  upon  a  colt  the  foal  of  an  ass.^ 

Now  it  is  a  characteristic  of  Hebrew  po- 
etry that  the  second  line  or  clause  in  a  verse 

» Zech.  9  :  9. 

189 


THE    LIFE    OF    JESUS 

rhythmically  repeats  what  has  already  been 
said  in  the  first  line.  But  the  Evangelist,  ap- 
parently ignorant  of  this  feature — this  poetic 
paralleling  of  a  statement — supposed  the 
prophet  to  refer  to  two  animals.  He  there- 
fore introduced  both  into  his  narrative  and 
virtually  represented  Jesus  as  riding  into 
the  city  on  both!  "And  they  brought  the 
ass,  and  the  colt,  and  put  on  them  their 
clothes,  and  they  set  him  thereon."  ^ 

On  arriving  at  Jerusalem,  Jesus  went  di- 
rectly to  the  temple.  No  sooner  had  he 
crossed  the  threshold  of  its  outer  court  than 
his  eye  fell  upon  a  spectacle  revolting  in  the 
extreme — hucksters  and  money-changers 
trading  within  the  sacred  precincts.  Paus- 
ing only  to  make  a  whip  of  cords,  he  gave 
vent  to  his  righteous  indignation  by  driving 
the  desecrators  out  from  the  hallowed  en- 
closure. An  act  of  heroic  imprudence  it 
was,  thrilling  us  anew  each  time  we  read  the 
inspiring  story  of  it. 

It  was  the  week  of  the  Passover  Feast,  the 
festival  which  celebrated  the  birthday  of  He- 
brew independence,  after  the  long  years  of 

^Matt.    21  :  7;    compare   Mark   11  :  7   and  Luke   19  :  35. 
190 


THE    CRUCIFIXION 

bondage  under  Egyptian  rule.  Booths  had 
been  erected  from  which  to  sell  the  lambs 
that  were  to  be  eaten  at  the  Passover  sup- 
per. Doves,  too,  were  for  sale,  in  order  that 
mothers  of  infants  might  offer  the  sacrifice 
ordained  by  the  Law.^  Sparrows,  ''two  for 
a  farthing,"  ''cleansed"  lepers  might  buy, 
to  participate  in  the  festival,  as  the  Levitical 
legislation  provided.^  Tables  for  money- 
changers were  set  up  in  order  that  persons 
with  large  coins,  like  the  talent,  might  ex- 
change them  for  smaller  pieces  and  also  that 
the  civil  Eoman  might  be  changed  for  Jew- 
ish ceremonial  money,  denarii  for  shekels, 
since  none  but  these  were  accepted  in  the 
Temple. 

Now  these  booths  and  tables,  incident  to 
the  Passover  Festival,  had  been  stationed 
within  the  outer  court  of  the  Temple,  known 
as  the  Court  of  the  Gentiles.  Possibly  the 
hucksters  and  money-changers  had  pressed 
further  in,  beyond  the  "gate  beautiful,"  to 
the  next  inner  court.  But  whatever  the  part 
of  the  Temple-grounds  in  which  Jesus  found 

^  Lev.  15  :  29. 
"Lev.  14  :4. 

191 


THE    LIFE    OF    JESUS 

these  traders  stationed,  the  Law  explicitly- 
prohibited  the  conducting  of  this  business 
within  the  Temple  walls.  Imagine,  then,  the 
feelings  of  Jesus  when  he  discovered  this 
unholy  traffic ,  this  brazen  profanation  of 
sacred  proprieties  in  the  interests  of  busi- 
ness, this  conversion  of  a  "house  of  prayer" 
into  a  market-place.  Instantly  he  drives  the 
transgressors  out  of  the  consecrated  enclo- 
sure, saying,  "My  house  shall  be  called  a 
house  of  prayer  unto  all  nations." 

Who  were  the  people  affected  by  this  ex- 
pulsion? They  were  the  Sadducees,  who  had 
control  of  all  the  business  connected  with 
the  Passover  Feast.  From  the  Talmud  we 
learn  of  one  Annan,  by  name,  having  a  mo- 
nopoly of  this  business.  We  are  told  also 
of  a  son  of  Gamaliel,  teacher  of  the  apostle 
Paul,  interfering  to  break  the  exorbitant 
prices  that  were  asked  for  sacrificial  animals 
and  birds.  Rabbi  Hirsch,  of  Chicago,  the 
most  learned  of  living  rabbis  in  the  United 
States,  assures  us  that  this  Annan  is  iden- 
tical with  the  Annas  of  the  Gospels,  father- 
in-law  of  Caiaphas,  the  high  priest,  and  who, 
because  of  this  kinship,  was  specially  priv- 
192 


THE    CRUCIFIXION 

ileged  in  having  the  ear  of  Pontius  Pilate. 
Thus,  by  his  blow  at  the  interests  of  the 
monopolist,  Jesus  was  brought  into  direct 
conflict  with  the  most  powerful  friends  of 
the  Roman  governor.  And  this  antagonism 
must  have  been  greatly  aggravated  if  he  said 
— what  has  been  attributed  to  him  by  the 
author  of  the  Fourth  Gospel — that  any  place 
was  just  as  good  as  the  Temple  for  wor- 
ship if  only  one  worshipped  "in  spirit  and 
in  truth."  For  such  a  remark  would  have 
done  an  industrial  injury  to  all  temple- 
trade — a  striking  parallel  to  which  is  fur- 
nished by  the  effect  of  Paul's  speech  at 
Ephesus  upon  the  local  manufacturers  of 
shrines  and  images  of  Diana,  when  he  pro- 
posed a  substitute-worship  for  that  of  the 
goddess.^ 

All  that  the  irate  Sadducees  had  to  do  was 
to  take  Jesus  to  Pontius  Pilate  and  denounce 
him  as  a  rebel,  as  an  insurgent,  as  a  danger- 
ous character,  to  be  quickly  put  out  of  the 
way.  And  while  they  were  busy  devising  the 
best  means  by  which  to  achieve  the  over- 
throw of  Jesus,  he  was  in  a  near-by  garden, 

*Act8  19  :23. 

193 


THE    LIFE    OF    JESUS 

realizing  the  awful  seriousness  of  the  situa- 
tion, weighing  the  tremendous  issues  of  the 
hour  and  imploring  Divine  guidance,  while 
about  him  lay  his  trusted  disciples,  asleep. 

Here,  in  this  garden,  he  was  arrested  by 
a  band  of  men,  among  whom  were  servants 
of  the  high  priest  to  whose  house  he  was  at 
once  deported.  The  disciples,  according  to 
Matthew's  account,  made  an  attempt  at  re- 
sistance. It  was  promptly  checked  by  Jesus 
with  the  words,  ''All  they  that  take  the  sword 
shall  perish  with  the  sword. ' '  ^ 

Just  what  the  charge  was  upon  which  he 
was  arraigned  is  not  clear. 

The  Gospel  of  Mark  states  that  an  effort 
was  made  to  find  witnesses  who  would  tes- 
tify against  him,  but  they  ' '  contradicted  each 
other."  Then  there  came  into  the  court- 
room a  ''false  witness"  testifying  that  he 
had  heard  Jesus  say  he  would  ' '  destroy  this 
temple  .  .  .  and  in  three  days  build  an- 
other." Caiaphas,  therefore,  after  hearing 
many  witnesses  and  finding  that  their  testi- 
mony did  not  agree,  broke  out  with  the  ques- 
tion, "Art  thou  the  Christ,  the  Son  of  the 

"■  Matt.  26  :  52. 

194 


THE    CRUCIFIXION 

Blessed?"  And  Jesus  replied,  "I  am:  and 
ye  shall  see  the  Son  of  Man  sitting  at  the 
right  hand  of  power,  and  coming  with  the 
clouds  of  heaven."  Thereupon,  the  high 
priest  rent  his  clothes  as  a  symbol  that  blas- 
phemy had  been  uttered.  "Ye  have  heard 
the  blasphemy, ' '  he  cries.  ' '  What  think  ye  ? " 
And  they  all  with  one  accord  ''condemned 
him  to  be  worthy  of  death." 

With  reference  to  the  narratives  of  Jesus' 
trial  there  are  two  or  three  important  points 
to  be  noted.^  In  the  first  place,  all  the  ac- 
counts of  what  transpired  at  the  private  ses- 
sion in  Caiaphas'  house  and  before  the  San- 
hedrin  are  grounded  upon  conjecture  only. 
For  though  Peter  followed  his  Master  to  the 
palace  of  the  high  priest,  he  sat  in  the  hall 
with  the  servants  awaiting  the  issue  of  the 
trial.2  None  of  the  disciples  was  present, 
nor  was  any  reporter  there.  None  but  mem- 
bers of  the  Sanhedrin  were  admitted. 

Undoubtedly  the  disciples  assumed  that 
Jesus  would  be  asked  the  question,  ''Art 
thou  the  Messiah?"     But  whether  he  was 

'Mark   14  -.55   et  seq.;  compare  Matt.   26  and  Luke  22. 
^Matt.  26  :  58^  69^  75. 

195 


THE    LIFE    OF    JESUS 

asked  it  and  what  he  answered  if  the  ques- 
tion was  put  to  him,  we  cannot  tell.  The 
Synoptics  record  three  forms  of  the  question 
and  three  different  answers.^  Perhaps  he 
maintained  a  dignified  silence.  On  the  other 
hand,  it  is  equally  possible  that  he  made  an- 
swer in  the  affirmative,  declaring  himself  the 
Messiah,  but  meaning  thereby  the  prophetic- 
ethical,  not  the  political-regal  type  of  Mes- 
siah, and  feeling  that  to  attempt  an  explana- 
tion of  the  difference  would  have  been  futile. 
His  spiritual  conception  of  the  office  would 
certainly  have  met  with  no  response  in  the 
hearts  of  men  impatient  for  the  coming  of 
the  expected  political  Deliverer.  Hence  he 
may  have  said:  "I  am  the  Christ."  But 
whether  he  answered  or  kept  silence,  his 
doom  was  already  sealed.  His  enemies  were 
determined  to  put  him  out  of  the  way. 

A  second  point  in  the  narrative  to  be  noted 
is  that  if  ''blasphemy"  was  the  charge,  Jesus 
was  not  guilty  of  it.  According  to  the  Law, 
blasphemy  consists  in  pronouncing  the  in- 
effable name  ^   (Yahweh).     Jesus,  however, 

'Mark  14  :  61;  Matt.  26  :  64;  Luke  22  :  67. 
'I^v.  24, 

196 


THE    CRUCIFIXION 

substituted  the  word  power — ''Ye  shall  see 
the  Son  of  Man  coming  with  power."  As 
for  his  other  utterances,  *'I  am"  (the 
Christ),  ''I  will  destroy  this  temple  and  in 
three  days  build  another,"  neither  of  these 
could  be  lawfully  construed  as  blasphemy. 

Once  more,  we  must  note  the  fact  that  the 
conviction  of  Jesus  by  the  Sanhedrin,  the 
supreme  court,  was  flagrantly  illegal.  The 
illegality  of  it  appears  in  the  following  five 
counts.  And  we  have  warrant  for  so  think- 
ing in  the  Talmud,  which  has  preserved  for 
us,  in  the  tract  entitled  ''Sanhedrin,"  full 
details  of  legal  procedure: 

1. — The  Sanhedrin  could  not  convene  at 
night,  for  all  trials  involving  capital  punish- 
ment had  to  be  begun  and  ended  by  day. 

2. — The  Sanhedrin  could  not  convene  on 
the  day  before  the  Sabbath,  or  on  the  day 
before  a  festival. 

3. — This  highest  court  could  not  condemn 
an  accused  man  on  the  same  day  that  his 
case  was  tried. 

4. — The  Sanhedrin  could  not  convict  with- 
out the  evidence  of  two  witnesses. 

5. — In  "blasphemy"  cases,  the  court  could 
197 


THE    LIFE    OF    JESUS 

not  condemn  unless   the  utterance  was  an 
unmistakable  blasphemy. 

As  "the  right  of  the  sword"  was  no  longer 
a  prerogative  of  the  Jewish  authorities,  they 
having  been  dispossessed  of  it  since  the  year 
6  A.  D.,  when  Judea  came  directly  under  Ro- 
man jurisdiction,  the  Sanhedrin  had  no  alter- 
native but  to  send  Jesus  to  Pilate.  The  Ro- 
man procurator,  after  cross-examination  of 
Jesus,  felt  wholly  disposed  to  release  him. 
But  after  hearing  the  protestations  and  en- 
treaties of  his  Jewish  subjects,  who  insisted 
that  Jesus  was  an  insurrectionist  and  that  as 
such  he  ought  not  to  be  set  free  by  Csesar's 
representative,  Pilate  adopted  the  politic 
course  of  allowing  the  Jews  to  deal  with 
Jesus  according  to  their  own  law.  But  to 
put  Jesus  to  death  was  Rome's  right  alone. 
Only  as  they  might  secure  permission  from 
Pilate  could  they  carry  out  their  death  sen- 
tence. And  he,  after  further  deliberation, 
''handed  him  over  to  them  to  be  crucified." 
And  they  crucified  him.  Such  is  the  testi- 
mony of  the  earliest  witness  to  the  text  of 
the  Gospels,  the  Sinaitic-Syriac  palimpsest 
manuscript  discovered  on  Mt.  Sinai  in 
198 


THE    CRUCIFIXION 

1892  by  Mrs.  Agnes  Lewis  of  London.  In 
our  authorized  and  revised  versions  of  the 
Gospels  according  to  Matthew  and  Mark  we 
read:  ^'He  (Pilate)  delivered  Jesus  to  be 
crucified."^  But  in  this  recently  discovered 
manuscript  the  important  words  ''to  them" 
are  inserted  after  ''Jesus,"  thus  indicating 
explicitly  that  Pilate  handed  Jesus  over  to 
the  Jews  for  crucifixion.  The  self-same  read- 
ing appears  in  Codex  Cadabrigiensis,  as  it 
is  called,  a  manuscript  in  the  library  of  Cam- 
bridge University  which  ranks  next  in  an- 
tiquity to  the  Sinaitic  and  Vatican  manu- 
scripts. "Jesus  he  took  and  handed  him 
over  to  them  (dvTois)  that  they  might  crucify 

him ' '    (Jva  <TTavp(i}(Tu>aiv  dvrov). 

Thus  our  earliest  extant  witness,  the  Sin- 
aitic Syriac  manuscript,  together  with  the 
Cambridge  Codex,  supports  the  contention 
that  Pilate  gave  his  sanction  for  the  execu- 
tion of  Jesus  by  the  Jewish  authorities.  Luke's 
version  furnishes  some  corroboration  of  this 
textual  evidence,  for  his  reading  is:  "He 
delivered  Jesus  to  their  (the  Jews')  will."^ 

»Matt.  26  :  26;   Mark  15  :  15. 

■  Luke  23  :  25 ;  compare  Matt.  26  :  26  and  Mark  15  :  15. 

14  199 


THE    LIFE    OF    JESUS 

The  popular  opinion  that  Jesus  was  exe- 
cuted by  Eoman  soldiers  is  based  on  the  sup- 
position that  crucifixion  was  exclusively  Ro- 
man, not  a  Jewish  mode  of  punishment. 
But,  as  Professor  Schmidt  has  pointed  out, 
in  his  illuminating  pages  on  this  subject,^ 
the  ancient  Jewish  law  included  hanging,  or 
impaling,  among  the  authorized  forms  of 
execution,  and  the  Apostle  Paul,  in  his  letter 
to  the  Galatians,^  identified  hanging  with  the 
Roman  crucifixion.  Furthermore,  Josephus 
tells  us  that  Alexander  Jannaeus,  who  was 
King  of  the  Jews  in  the  year  100  A.  D.,  or- 
dered fifty  rebels  to  be  crucified,^  proving 
that  the  Jews  supplemented  the  ordinances 
of  their  Law  with  the  Roman  practice  of 
crucifixion.  Thus  Pilate's  permission,  ac- 
corded the  Jews,  to  crucify  Jesus  may  have 
served  as  a  historical  precedent  for  such 
eclecticism. 

Reviewing  the  causes  which  culminated  in 
the  crucifixion  of  Jesus,  we  recognize  three 
as  having  been  operative  in  direct  succession, 
as  follows: 

^Schmidt:     "The  Prophet  of  Nazareth,"  p.  286  et  seq. 

'  Gal.  3  :  13. 

'Schmidt:     "The  Prophet  of  Nazareth,"  p.  289. 

200 


THE    CRUCIFIXION 

First,  the  hostility  Jesus  engendered  in  the 
Pharisees,  who  repudiated  his  radicalism  and 
despised  his  democratic  and  cosmopolitan 
spirit.  Second,  the  hostility  he  engendered 
in  the  Sadducees,  whose  business  interests 
he  interfered  with,  and  who,  having  the  ju- 
diciary under  their  control,  were  empowered 
to  convict  Jesus  and  to  influence  Pontius  Pi- 
late in  his  final  pronouncement.  Third,  the 
cowardly,  craven  attitude  of  Pilate  himself 
toward  his  subjects  and  toward  Jesus.  He 
who  could  ''see  no  fault"  in  Jesus,  he  who 
had  it  in  his  power  to  set  him  free,  was, 
nevertheless,  actuated  by  purely  selfish  con- 
siderations. He  saw  a  chance  to  score  with 
the  people  over  whom  he  ruled  and  a  chance 
to  win  the  approbation  of  his  superior  officer 
at  Rome.  Therefore,  he  gave  permission  to 
the  Jews  to  gratify  their  wish  and  crucify 
Jesus.  Remembering  that  Jesus  was  a  Jew, 
not  a  Christian,  and  recalling  the  fact  that, 
as  yet,  there  was  no  Christianity,  it  is  obvi- 
ously absurd  that  Christian  persecutors  of 
Jews  should  base  their  antipathy  upon  the 
Jewish  crucifixion  of  Jesus.  Moreover,  it 
should  be  al§9  remembered  that  the  same 
201 


THE    LIFE    OF    JESUS 

traditionalism,  the  same  opposition  to  new 
teaching,  that  was  manifested  by  the  crucify- 
ing Jews  has  been  also  exhibited  by  their 
spiritual  relatives  in  other  religions  toward 
teachers  whose  gospel  they  could  not  ap- 
preciate. 

It  was  in  devotion  to  a  sublime  purpose 
that  Jesus  lost  his  life,  namely,  to  fulfill  the 
function  of  a  prophetic,  as  against  a  regal, 
Messiah.  Not  to  deliver  his  fellow-country- 
men from  Roman  oppression — God  would 
soon  do  that  by  miraculous  intervention — but 
to  deliver  human  souls  from  the  despotism 
of  sin.  Not  to  set  up  a  new  political  organi- 
zation— God  would  provide  that  in  the  new 
Kingdom  so  soon  to  be — ^but  to  establish  a 
pattern  of  moral  living.  Not  to  be  a  Messiah 
who  would  escape  suffering  and  crucifixion, 
but  rather  one  who,  by  his  own  death,  would 
show  forth  the  truth  that  only  in  losing  one 's 
life  does  one  save  it.  Such  was  the  transcen- 
dent aim  to  which  he  dedicated  his  life. 

The  uniform  tradition  of  the  Synoptic  Gos- 
pels is  that  Jesus  uttered  a  cry  of  pain  upon 
the  cross  and  that,  in  accordance  with  the 
mercy-clause  in  the  Jewish  law,  the  pain 
202 


THE    CRUCIFIXION 

was  numbed  by  application  to  his  lips  of  a 
sponge  dipped  in  wine  and  myrrh.  Accord- 
ing to  the  first  two  Gospels  Jesus  exclaimed : 
*'My  God,  my  God,  why  hast  thou  forsaken 
me?"  a  quotation  from  the  twenty-second 
Psalm.  Professor  Schmiedel,  author  of  the 
article  ''Gospels,"  in  the  ''Encyclopaedia 
Biblica,"  includes  this  cry  among  the  utter- 
ances of  Jesus  that  are  not  to  be  doubted. 
Though  usually  construed  as  an  expression 
of  utter  despair,  a  surrender  of  faith  in  God 
and  in  his  own  cause,  yet  the  sequel  to  the 
cry  proves  that  it  was  but  a  momentary  mis- 
giving. For  he  remains  unfalteringly  true 
to  his  purpose  and  instantly  regains  serenity 
of  soul.  On  the  other  hand,  the  cry  may  be 
unhistorical  after  all.  Would  the  Jews  who 
heard  it  have  confused  the  word  "Eloi," 
meaning  "my  God,"  with  an  appeal  to 
Elijah  r  The  Apocryphal  Gospel  of  Peter, 
however,  reports  the  sayings  as,  ' '  My  power, 
my  power,  thou  hast  forsaken  me. ' ' 

According  to  the  third  Gospel  Jesus  ut- 
tered no  cry  of  God-forsakenness,  but  a 
trustful  prayer:   "Into  thy  hands  I  commit 

»  Mark   15  :  34. 

203 


THE    LIFE    OF    JESUS 

my  spirit. ' '  Here  also  is  recorded  the  utter- 
ance of  another  prayer,  offered  but  a  few 
moments  before  the  final  word,  "Father  for- 
give them  for  they  know  not  what  they  do. ' ' 
But  the  authenticity  of  this  touching  prayer 
has  been  justly  questioned  because  it  is  want- 
ing in  the  Vatican  manuscript,  while  in  the 
Sinaitic  it  shows  distinct  marks  of  having 
been  tampered  with.  The  probability  is  that 
it  represents  a  later  rescension  of  the  prayer 
of  Stephen  the  martyr,  who,  when  stoned  to 
death,  cried  out,  "Lord,  lay  not  this  sin  to 
their  charge. ' '  * 

Thus  the  testimony  touching  the  cry  of 
Jesus  upon  the  cross  leaves  us  uncertain  as 
to  its  actual  content.  But  that  there  was  a 
cry,  all  the  evangelists  are  agreed,  and  it 
indicates  that  the  crucifixion  was  no  mere 
drama,  no  "playing  at  suffering"  on  the 
part  of  a  deity  in  disguise,  but  a  real,  intense 
human  experience. 

Within  recent  years  it  has  been  contended 
by  certain  representatives  of  the  "school 
of  radical  criticism,"  which  originated  in 
Holland,  that  the  crucifixion  of  Jesus  is  un- 

>  Acts  7  :  60. 

204 


THE    CRUCIFIXION 

historical,  notwithstanding  the  successful  de- 
nuding of  the  narratives  of  their  elements  of 
supernaturalism.  Conspicuous  among  the 
exponents  of  this  view  is  the  Rev.  T.  K. 
Cheyne,  canon  of  Rochester  Cathedral,  Eng- 
land and  one  of  the  foremost  interpreters 
of  the  higher  criticism  of  both  the  Old  Tes- 
tament and  the  New.  For  him  the  crucifixion 
stories  are  only  "food  for  the  soul"  and  void 
of  historical  content,  a  view  which  is,  to  say 
the  least,  open  to  considerable  objection.  On 
the  other  hand,  it  must  be  frankly  admitted 
that  to  strip  a  story  of  supernatural  elements 
and  reduce  it  to  the  plane  of  the  natural  and 
possible,  by  no  means  establishes  its  histori- 
city. The  higher  criticism,  it  is  true,  has 
made  the  crucifixion  narratives  acceptable  to 
an  age  devoid  of  faith  in  supernaturalism, 
but  this  achievement  does  not  confer  upon 
them  historical  reality.  A  parallel  instance 
is  furnished  by  recent  research  in  the  realm 
of  psychical  science.  Many  a  wonder-work 
reported  in  the  Gospels  has  been  shown,  in 
the  light  of  this  research,  to  fall  within  the 
scope  of  the  possible.  But  this  by  no  means 
implies  the  actuality  of  the  reported  phe- 
205 


THE    LIFE    OF    JESUS 

nomena.  Similarly,  when  the  crucifixion 
story  has  been  shown  to  be  within  the  limits 
of  ordinary  human  experience,  that  does  not 
bestow  upon  it  historicity.  Herein  we  all 
will  agree  with  the  "school  of  radical  criti- 
cism" and  we  will  seek  to  establish  our  be- 
lief in  the  crucifixion  as  a  historical  event 
on  other  and  legitimate  grounds.  These  must 
be  sought  in  external  and  internal  evidence. 
Under  the  latter  category  we  include  the  tes- 
timony of  certain  Roman  historians  who 
flourished  in  the  first  and  second  century, 
notably  Suetonius  and  Tacitus,  and  who 
make  mention  of  the  crucifixion  as  though  it 
were  the  one  fact  concerning  Jesus  worthy 
to  be  recorded.  And  when  we  turn  to  the 
Gospels  themselves  and  make  due  allowance 
for  all  that  is  untenable  or  doubtful  in  their 
reports,  and  for  the  fact  that  they  were  writ- 
ten with  an  eye  to  doctrine  and  to  edifica- 
tion, the  one  point  that  stands  out  as  most 
certain  would  seem  to  be  the  historical  cru- 
cifixion itself,  the  ultimate  actuality  whence 
the  differing  narratives  originated.  Such  at 
least  is  the  conclusion  to  which  the  great 
majority  of  modern  scholars  have  been  led. 
206 


THE    CRUCIFIXION 

Nor  must  we  fail  to  take  note  of  the  in- 
direct testimony  of  the  apostle  Paul.  Had 
there  been  no  actual  crucifixion  of  an  his- 
torical Jesus,  there  would  have  been  no  mis- 
sionary to  the  Gentiles  preaching  a  new  gos- 
pel of  salvation.  Had  the  crucifixion  been 
only  a  spiritual  fact,  furnishing,  as  such, 
"food  for  the  soul,"  the  Pauline  gospel  of 
redemption  would  never  have  been  preached. 
Thus  does  Paul's  ministry  serve  to  attest 
not  only  the  crucifixion,  but  also  the  his- 
toricity of  Jesus. 

Finally,  it  should  be  observed  that  the  suf- 
fering of  Jesus  on  the  cross  is  not  to  be 
compared  with  that  related  of  those  men  and 
women  who,  in  the  middle  ages,  were  the  vic- 
tims of  cruelest  persecution,  tortured  to 
death  in  iron-spiked  revolving  cages  and 
other  hideous  devices  for  the  production  of 
the  most  excruciating  pain.  Why,  then,  have 
the  sufferings  of  Jesus  made  an  unparalleled 
impression  upon  the  Christian  millions?  It 
is  because  in  proportion  to  the  moral  worth 
of  the  sufferer  so  do  we  feel  indignation  at 
the  suffering  to  which  he  has  been  subjected. 
And  the  spiritual  greatness  of  Jesus,  ground- 
207 


THE    LIFE    OF    JESUS 

ed  in  Ms  simple  trust  in  God  and  in  his  sin- 
cere recognition  of  the  essential  worth  in- 
hering in  every  human  soul  as  a  child  of 
God,  that  greatness  in  him  was  such  as  to 
attach  an  exceptional  sense  of  horror  to  the 
suffering  of  the  Cross. 


VII 

THE   RESURRECTION 

Permit  me  to  remind  you  of  what  was 
stated  in  the  introduction  to  this  course,  viz., 
that  the  opinions  expressed  by  a  representa- 
tive of  an  Ethical  Society  commit  no  one  but 
the  lecturer.  Let  me  remind  you  also  that  the 
primary  purpose  of  the  course  is  not  negative 
and  iconoclastic,  not  to  ' '  pick  the  New  Testa- 
ment to  pieces,"  but  rather  to  build  up 
knowledge  of  the  truth,  so  far  as  it  is  in  our 
power  to  attain  it.  This  point  needs  fresh 
emphasis,  because  when  criticism  of  the  Gos- 
pels is  indispensable  to  clearing  the  ground 
and  laying  solid  foundations  for  the  struc- 
ture of  positive  knowledge,  one  easily  gets 
the  impression  that  the  critical  process  is 
an  end  in  itself,  whereas  it  is  only  the  neces- 
sary means  to  the  ulterior  end  of  arriving 
at  truth  on  the  questions  at  issue.  No  sub- 
209 


THE    LIFE    OP    JESUS 

ject  is  ever  desecrated  by  a  consecrated 
search  for  truth  concerning  it.  Therefore, 
when  we  approach  the  subject  of  the  resur- 
rection of  Jesus  we  cannot  take  the  attitude 
assumed  by  Albertus  Magnus,  Thomas  Aqui- 
nas and  other  mediaeval  schoolmen,  who  set 
the  story  of  the  resurrection  apart  as  some- 
thing too  sacred  to  be  investigated.  On  the 
contrary,  we  hold  that  the  very  sanctity  of 
the  subject  is  in  a  measure  conditioned  by 
the  verification  of  what  is  claimed  concern- 
ing it.  And  just  to  the  extent  that  we  sus- 
pect the  lurking  of  error  will  our  sense  of 
the  sacredness  involved  be  jeopardized.  'Tis 
in  the  spirit  of  Lessing's  famous  affirmation 
that  we  address  ourselves  to  the  endeavor 
of  arriving  at  truth  concerning  the  resurrec- 
tion of  Jesus.  If  God,  said  Lessing,  would 
give  me  my  choice  between  truth  and  the 
search  for  truth,  I  would  unhesitatingly 
choose  the  latter.  With  him  we  feel  pro- 
foundly persuaded  of  the  moral  value  of  such 
search,  its  beneficent  reaction  upon  the  char- 
acter and  upon  the  mind.  Let  us,  then,  in 
our  reverent  quest,  begin  with  propositions 
about  which  there  can  be  no  dispute.  The 
210 


THE    RESURRECTION 

more  wonderful  and  strange  any  alleged 
event,  the  greater  the  amount  of  evidence 
required  to  establish  belief  in  its  occurrence. 
A  physical  resurrection  of  one  actually  dead 
will  require  an  extraordinary  amount  of  evi- 
dence to  warrant  our  believing  it,  for  it  is 
the  most  stupendous  of  all  reported  events. 
The  New  Testament  reports  such  an  event 
in  the  experience  of  Jesus.  What  evidence 
is  there  to  support  belief  in  it?  In  the  first 
place,  we  have  to  note  that  not  one  of  the 
Gospels  presents  us  with  a  first-hand  report 
of  what  is  recorded;  not  one  of  them  gives 
us  the  testimony  of  an  eye-witness  as  to  what 
happened.  The  earliest  of  these  reports 
(Mark)  was  prepared  about  forty  years  after 
Jesus'  death.  Upon  these  fundamental  con- 
siderations we  have  already  dwelt  in  a  pre- 
ceding lecture,  and  therefore  they  need  not 
be  now  rehearsed.  A  second  important  point 
to  be  noted  at  the  outset  is  that  the  triple 
tradition — the  story  of  the  life  of  Jesus  in 
which  all  three  of  the  Synoptic  Gospels 
agree — contains  no  account  of  a  miraculous 
return  to  life,  nor  of  any  ascension  into 
heaven.  For  the  resurrection  and  ascension 
211 


THE    LIFE    OF    JESUS 

narratives  at  the  end  of  the  Gospel  accord- 
ing to  Mark,  were  no  part  of  the  original 
record,  a  fact  to  which  we  shall  shortly  re- 
turn. A  third  point  to  be  observed  relates  to 
what  we  have  already  seen,  in  the  case  of  the 
temptation  and  healing  narratives,  viz.,  that 
the  account  as  given  in  the  earliest  Gospel 
grows  with  the  telling,  taking  on  more  and 
more  of  the  wonderful  in  the  process  of 
transmission  from  one  generation  to  the  next. 
So  the  simple,  frank  story  of  what  followed 
the  crucifixion,  as  told  in  Mark's  Gospel,  is 
enlarged  upon  in  each  of  the  succeeding  nar- 
ratives.   To  illustrate: 

Mark :    Three  women  find  the  tomb  empty. 

Matthew:  Three  women  see  the  empty 
tomb  and  the  risen  Lord. 

Luke:  The  women  and  the  disciples  see 
the  empty  tomb  and  the  risen  Lord. 

Mark:  The  women  told  no  one  what  they 
had  seen  and  heard. 

Matthew  and  Luke:  The  women  report 
their  observations  and  experiences. 

Mark  and  Matthew  make  Galilee  the  scene 
of  an  appearance  of  Jesus  to  his  disciples. 

Luke  makes  Jerusalem  and  its  vicinity 
212 


THE    RESURRECTION 

(not  Galilee)  the  scene  of  several  appear- 
ances of  Jesus,  and  in  firm  bodily  form,  even 
eating  and  drinking  and  allowing  himself  to 
be  touched. 

Now,  it  is  quite  possible  that  one  and  the 
same  event  may  be  differently  described  by 
eye-witnesses,  but  they  ought  not  to  differ 
in  such  vital  particulars  as  these  just  cited. 
Whether  the  tomb  was  guarded  or  not; 
whether,  when  Jesus  appeared,  Mary  Magda- 
len was  alone  or  not;  whether  Jesus  ap- 
peared in  Galilee  or  in  Jerusalem;  whether 
the  women  reported  what  they  saw  or  kept 
silent  about  it;  whether  the  events  recorded 
required  one  day  or  eight  days ;  on  such  im- 
portant details  we  are  warranted  in  expect- 
ing agreement,  and  the  observed  differences 
cannot  be  construed  as  of  the  kind  eye-wit- 
nesses reporting  the  event  would  be  prone  to 
exhibit. 

Recall  for  a  moment  the  account  of  the 
closing  scene  of  Jesus'  life  as  given  by  the 
Evangelist  Mark.  Jesus  was  crucified  at 
nine  o'clock  and  died  at  three  o'clock,  the 
death  process  having  taken  six  hours.  Be- 
fore sunset  Joseph  of  Arimathea  obtained 
213 


THE    LIFE    OF    JESUS 

permission  to  take  the  body  from  the  cross, 
because  it  was  unlawful  to  bury  anyone  on 
the  Sabbath.  He  deposits  the  body  in  a  cool 
rock-hewn  tomb.  Thirty-six  hours  later  three 
women  visit  the  tomb  and  find  it  empty.  A 
young  man  clothed  in  white,  seated  at  the 
entrance,  tells  them  that  Jesus,  whom  they 
seek,  is  risen  and  that  if  they  will  go  to  Gali- 
lee they  "will  find  him  there,  just  as  he  had 
said  to  them,  "And  they  went  out  .  .  .; 
for  they  trembled  and  were  amazed:  neither 
said  they  anything  to  any  man,  for  they  were 
afraid. ' '  No  explanation  is  given  of  the  dis- 
appearance of  Jesus,  nothing  indeed  but  the 
opinion  of  a  young  man  as  to  what  had  trans- 
pired. Then  follows  a  paragraph  of  twelve 
verses,  from  the  ninth  to  the  twentieth,  clos- 
ing the  Gospel  with  an  amplification  of  what 
is  recorded  in  the  preceding  eight  verses. 
This  ''appendix"  to  the  Gospel  recounts  a 
series  of  post-crucifixion  appearances  of 
Jesus — to  Mary  Magdalen,  to  two  disciples 
and  to  the  eleven  whom  he  upbraided  for 
their  unbelief  in  the  report  that  he  had  risen 
and  been  seen  by  them  who  brought  the  re- 
port. ' '  Then  after  the  Lord  had  spoken  unto 
214 


THE    RESURRECTION 

tliem,  lie  was  received  up  into  heaven,  and 
sat  on  the  right  hand  of  God." 

Ever  since  Tischendorf  s  discovery  of  the 
Sinaitic  manuscript  in  the  convent  of  Saint 
Catherine  on  Mount  Sinai  it  has  been  known 
that  this  appendix  was  no  part  of  the  orig- 
inal Gospel  according  to  Mark.  For  not  only 
is  it  wanting  in  this,  the  earliest  extant  Greek 
manuscript  of  the  Bible,  and  missing,  too, 
in  the  Vatican  manuscript,  of  equal  antiquity, 
but  it  is  also  no  part  of  the  Sinaitic-Syriac 
palimpsest  discovered  by  Mrs.  Lewis  at  the 
same  convent  on  Mount  Sinai  in  1892,  a  ver- 
sion that  harks  back  to  a  third  century  Syriac 
edition  of  the  Gospels,  and,  as  such,  ante- 
dates the  two  earliest  Greek  manuscripts  by 
at  least  a  century  as  a  witness  to  the  text 
of  the  Gospels. 

A  further  reason  for  discrediting  this  ap- 
pendix is  the  fact  that  a  ''Peshito  "-Syriac 
version  of  the  Gospels — the  original  manu- 
script of  which  must  have  been  written  about 
the  middle  of  the  second  century,  having 
been  quoted  by  the  early  Christian  Fathers 
— not  only  lacks  the  closing  twelve  verses  in 
the  Gospel  of  Mark  as  we  have  it,  but,  after 
15  215 


THE    LIFE    OF    JESUS 

the  eighth  verse  of  the  last  chapter,  adds 
the  words:  "Here  endeth  the  Gospel  of 
Mark." 

Additional  discredit  attaches  to  the  ap- 
pendix when  we  observe  the  mysterious  blank 
in  the  Sinaitic  and  Vatican  manuscripts  just 
where  later  ones  exhibit  the  twelve  verses 
composing  the  appendix.  Prof.  Albert  Ed- 
munds of  Philadelphia,  to  whom  I  am  in- 
debted for  knowledge  of  this  striking  feature 
of  the  close  of  the  Markan  Gospel,  has  also 
called  attention  to  the  unfinished  character 
of  verse  eight  of  the  last  chapter  of  this  Gos- 
pel.^ It  ends  with  the  Greek  particle,  yap, 
meaning  ''because,"  and  the  abruptness  of 
this  ending  is  most  apparent  when  read 
in  the  original,  Ci<f)o/3ovTo  yap,")  a  termination 
as  anomalous  in  Greek  as  would  be  the 
word  ''because"  at  the  close  of  an  English 
sentence.  "They  were  afraid  because"  .  .  . 
So  reads  the  genuine  Markan  Gospel,  closing 
in  the  middle  of  a  sentence,  at  verse  eight. 
The  twelve  following  verses  (the  appendix) 
stand  in  no  necessary  relation  to  what  pre- 
cedes  them.     They   retell   the   resurrection 

*  Edmunds:     "The  Open  Court,"  1910,  p.  131. 

216 


THE    llESURRECTION 

story,  but  with  no  reference  to,  or  explana- 
tion of,  the  empty  tomb  or  the  women's  pres- 
ence, or  the  advice  volunteered  by  the  young 
man,  who,  by  the  way,  becomes  ''an  angel" 
in  the  story  as  given  by  the  two  later  evan- 
gelists. 

As  for  the  mysterious  gap  between  the 
close  of  the  genuine  Markan  Gospel  and  the 
beginning  of  Luke 's  Gospel — seen  in  the  Sin- 
aitic  and  Vatican  manuscripts — this,  it  would 
seem,  indicates  that  the  original  ending  was 
suppressed,  perhaps  because  it  upheld  the 
view  that  the  appearance  of  Jesus  was  phan- 
tasmal, like  the  vision  seen  by  the  apostle 
Paul.^  When  in  the  second  century  the  Gos- 
pels were  made  part  of  the  New  Testament 
canon,  there  flourished  a  sect  known  as  the 
' '  Docetists. ' '  They  derived  their  name  from 
the  belief,  distinctive  of  the  sect,  that  Jesus 
never  appeared  in  flesh  and  blood,  but  only 
as  a  phantom.  So  dangerous  had  this  heresy 
become  that  when  Athanasius  drew  up  his 
''creed"  he  made  a  place  for  words  that 
would  unmistakably  suggest  the  corporeity 
of  Jesus:    "Man  of   the   substance   of  his 

» I  Cor.  15  :  8. 

217 


THE    LIFE    OF    JESUS 

mother,  born  in  the  world."  Consequently 
when  the  compilers  of  the  New  Testament 
observed  the  ''docetic"  character  of  the  res- 
urrection narrative  as  found  in  Mark,  they 
naturally  suppressed  it  and  inserted  a  sub- 
stitute story,  one  wholly  in  harmony  with  the 
traditional  orthodox  view  of  the  resurrec- 
tion. In  Matthew's  report  of  a  physical 
resurrection  of  Jesus  appears  the  striking 
phrase,  ''but  some  doubted."  The  sentence 
in  which  this  occurs  reads  as  follows :  ' '  And 
when  they  (the  disciples)  saw  him  (Jesus) 
they  worshipped  him:  but  some  doubted." 
Perhaps  Professor  Edmunds  is  correct  in  his 
supposition  that  the  author  of  this  Gospel, 
who  evidently  based  it  to  a  considerable  ex- 
tent on  the  Markan  Gospel,  borrowed  this 
sentence  from  the  original  ending  of  the 
genuine  Gospel  of  Mark.^  Be  this  as  it  may, 
the  reason  for  the  scepticism  reported  would 
seem  to  have  been  that  the  appearance  of 
Jesus  was  of  a  phantasmal  type. 

From  all  that  has  thus  far  been  said  con- 
cerning the  closing  twelve  verses  of  the  Gos- 
pel of  Mark  it  is  clear  that  we  must  regard 

»Edmunda:     "The  Open  Court,"  1910,  p.  132. 
218 


THE    RESURRECTION 

the  appendix  as  unauthentic,  as  no  part  of 
the  original  Gospel.  Gathering  the  evidence 
together  for  this  conclusion  we  have:  (1) 
The  absence  of  the  appendix  in  the  two  earli- 
est extant  Greek  manuscripts  and  its  initial 
appearance  in  the  next  earliest  manuscript, 
the  so-called  ''Alexandrian"  codex,  published 
in  the  fifth  century  or  about  a  hundred  years 
later  than  the  Sinaitic  and  Vatican  codices. 
(2)  The  mysterious  blank  between  the  end 
of  the  Gospel  of  Mark  and  the  beginning  of 
the  Gospel  of  Luke,  observed  in  both  of  these 
two  earliest  Greek  manuscripts,  clearly  in- 
dicating the  spuriousness  attributed  to  the 
appendix  by  the  scribes  who  copied  an  earlier 
manuscript  in  which  it  appeared,  or  indicat- 
ing that  even  in  such  an  earlier  manuscript 
the  appendix  was  missing.  (3)  The  ending 
of  the  Gospel  of  Mark  in  the  "Peshito"- 
Syriac  version  (dating  from  the  second  cen- 
tury) ,  at  the  eighth  verse,  and  supplemented 
by  the  words:  ''Here  endeth  the  Gospel  of 
Mark."  (4)  The  testimony  of  a  tenth  cen- 
tury Armenian  manuscript  throws  light  on 
the  probable  origin  of  the  appendix.  Here 
it  is  ascribed  to  one  Aristion,  a  presbyter  at 
219 


THE    LIFE    OF    JESUS 

Kome,  to  whom  Papias,  about  130  A.  D.  re- 
ferred as  an  oral  authority  on  the  life  of 
Jesus  in  the  second  century.  Aristion,  it 
seems,  composed  the  present  ending  of  the 
Gospel  as  a  substitute  for  the  original,  phan- 
tasmal, docetic  story,  discountenanced  by  the 
Church.  This  theory  has  the  support  of 
most  modern  scholars.  Professor  Bacon  of 
Yale  University  considers  it  quite  certain 
that  the  original  end  of  Mark  was  so  un- 
orthodox as  to  have  necessitated  a  substitute 
that  would  fall  in  with  traditional  beliefs 
about  the  resurrection.  What  the  original 
ending  was  is  wholly  conjectural.  Professor 
Edmunds  has  essayed  a  reproduction  of  it 
on  the  basis  of  allied  passages  in  the  Gospel 
of  Matthew  and  certain  Apocryphal  Gospels. 
In  his  rendering  the  eighth  verse  of  the 
Markan  story  reads :  ' '  They  were  afraid  be- 
cause of  the  Jews."  Then  follow  the  state- 
ments: ''They  told  all  things  unto  Peter 
and  his  companions  who  went  into  Galilee. 
Then  Jesus  appeared  unto  Peter  .  .  .  And 
Peter,  with  the  rest  of  the  eleven,  went  into 
a  mountain  where  Jesus  had  appointed  them. 
And  when  they  saw  him  they  worshipped 
220 


THE    RESURRECTION 

him;  but  some  doubted"  (for  his  form  was 
phantasmal). 

Turning,  now,  to  the  testimony  of  the  Mat- 
thean  and  Lucan  Gospels  we  observe,  after 
comparative  study  of  their  contents,  that 
they  differ  in  eight  particulars,  all  of  them 
pertaining  to  what  transpired  at  the  tomb. 

Who  were  the  women  at  the  sepulchre?^ 

At  what  time  did  they  come  to  it  1^ 

What  was  the  relation  of  the  stone  to  the 
sepulchre  F 

Did  one  or  two  angels  appear  there?* 

Who  saw  Jesus  there  P 

What  did  the  women  report  they  saw?® 

To  whom  did  they  report  it?'^ 

What  appearances  of  Jesus  were  there  ?^ 

If,  now,  we  compare  the  reports  of  all 
three  Gospels  with  one  another,  the  points 
of  difference  increase  from  eight  to  twelve. 
Placing  Matthew's  narrative  by  the  side  of 

^  Compare  Matt.  28  :  1-7  and  Luke  24  :  10. 

*  Compare  Matt.   28  :  1  and  Luke  24  :  1. 

» Compare   Matt.   28  :  2   and   Luke    24  :  2, 

*  Compare   Matt.   28  :  4   and   Luke   24  :  3. 

"  Compare   Matt.   28  :  9   and   Luke   24  :  15. 

*  Compare   Matt.   28  :  9   and  Luke   24  :  7-9. 

'  Compare  Matt.  28  :  10-16   and  Luke  24  :  9. 

*  Compare  Matt.  28  :  9  and  Luke  24  :  15. 

001 

aJawX 


THE    LIFE    OF    JESUS 

Mark's  and  Luke's,  we  see  that  theirs,  as 
against  his,  report  no  guard  at  the  tomb,  no 
sealing  of  the  sepulchre,  no  great  earth- 
quake, no  angel  from  heaven,  no  purpose  in 
the  women's  going  to  look  at  the  tomb  (be- 
cause they  had  already  looked  at  it  carefully 
before  ^)  except  to  bring  spices  for  embalm- 
ing the  body.  "When  did  they  bring  the 
spices?  According  to  Mark,  it  was  when  the 
Sabbath  was  quite  passed.^  But  Luke  tells 
us  they  bought  them  and  then  rested  on  the 
Sabbath.^  Matthew,  on  the  other  hand,  re- 
ports no  purchase  at  all.  The  women,  says 
Mark,  came  to  the  tomb  after  sunrise ;  ■*  ac- 
cording to  Luke,  it  was  at  early  dawn,^  and 
in  Matthew's  account,  it  was  about  half  a 
day  earlier.^  Again,  Mark  tells  us  ''they 
said  nothing  to  any  man;"  whereas  Luke 
reports  "they  told  the  eleven  everything;" 
while  Matthew  has  no  record  of  any  com- 
munication, or  of  their  having  kept  silent. 

*  Compare  Mark  15  :  47  and  Luke  23  :  58. 
^'Mark  16  :  1. 

"  Luke  23  :  54-56. 

*  Mark  16  :  2. 
'  Luke  24  :  1. 

*  Matt.  28  :  1. 

222 


THE    RESURRECTION 

According  to  Luke,  they  entered  the  tomb; 
according  to  Matthew,  they  did  not  enter  it; 
Mark  makes  no  mention  of  the  matter.  He, 
again,  reports  a  man  at  the  tomb ;  Matthew, 
an  angel;  Luke,  two  angels.  And,  whereas, 
Matthew  encouraged  the  women  because  they 
sought  Jesus,  Luke  blamed  them  for  so  do- 
ing.^ Mark  and  Matthew  tell  us  the  eleven 
were  to  go  to  Galilee  to  see  Jesus ;  Luke  says 
they  saw  him  at  Jerusalem.^  In  Mark's  ver- 
sion of  what  occurred  it  was  Mary  Magda- 
len, Mary,  mother  of  James  and  Salome,  who 
came  to  the  tomb.  But  in  Matthew's  story  it 
is  the  two  Marys  only  who  came.  While  in 
Luke's  it  was  the  two  Marys  and  Joanna.' 
Both  Mark  and  Luke  agree  that  the  stone 
had  been  rolled  away  when  the  women  came 
to  the  sepulchre ;  but  Matthew  reports  it  was 
rolled  back  in  the  presence  of  the  women  by 
an  angel.  Only  Luke  relates  an  appearance 
of  Jesus  to  two  disciples  on  the  road  to  Em- 
maus  on  the  resurrection  day.  Only  Luke 
recounts  an  appearance  to  Peter  before  the 

'Matt.  28  :  5;  Luke  24  :  5. 
'  Matt.  28  :  7 ;  Luke  24  :  15. 
•Mark  16  :  5;  Matt.  28  :  1;  Luke  24  :  10. 

223 


THE    LIFE    OF    JESUS 

evening  of  the  same  day.  And  Luke  alone 
tells  of  an  appearance  to  the  eleven  and  their 
companions  on  the  same  evening.  And  only 
this  Evangelist  gives  an  account  of  the  risen 
Jesus  telling  his  disciples  to  touch  him,  and 
eating  in  their  company  broiled  fish.^  Finally 
we  note  Matthew  states  that  Jesus'  first 
appearance  was  to  the  women;  Luke,  on  the 
other  hand,  assures  us  it  was  to  two  of  the 
disciples.  The  genuine  Mark  records  no  par- 
ticular post-mortem  appearance ;  but  the  first 
verse  of  the  appendix  makes  Mary  Magdalen 
the  one  to  whom  Jesus  first  appeared  after 
his  resurrection.^ 

If,  now,  we  should  proceed  with  our  study 
of  the  evidence  and  essay  a  comparison  of 
the  accounts  furnished  by  all  four  of  the 
Gospels  we  should  find,  as  against  eight  and 
twelve  points  of  difference,  twenty-one.  Not 
to  enter  upon  a  discussion  of  these,  which 
would  extend  this  lecture  far  beyond  its 
limits,  suflBce  it  simply  to  observe  that  there 
is  but  one  point  common  to  all  four  writers; 
it  is  the  statement  that  the  tomb  was  found 

'  Luke  24  :  13  et  seq. 
'  Mark  16  :  9. 

224 


THE    RESURRECTION 

empty.  So  far,  then,  as  the  concurrent  tes- 
timony of  the  Gospels  is  concerned,  it  re- 
minds us  of  the  conclusion  arrived  at  in  our 
study  of  the  miracles.  Applying  it  to  the  evi- 
dence we  have  just  examined,  it  is  to  the 
effect  that  somebody  said  that  somebody 
saw  Jesus,  somewhere,  at  some  time,  some- 
how, after  he  had  been  entombed.  In  other 
words,  the  testimony  in  support  of  belief  in 
a  physical  resurrection  of  Jesus  from  the 
grave,  as  presented  in  the  Gospels,  is  insuf- 
ficient to  permit  acceptance  of  the  belief. 

We  come  next  to  the  testimony  of  the 
Apostle  Paul.  His  evidence  has  an  advan- 
tage over  that  of  the  Gospels,  because  while 
we  know  not  precisely  when  or  by  whom  the 
Gospels  were  written,  we  do  know  that  the 
first  letter  to  the  Corinthians  and  the  letter 
to  the  Galatians  were  written  between  55  and 
57  A.  D.,  and  these  letters  are  generally  con- 
ceded to  be  genuine  productions  of  the  apos- 
tle. But  when  we  turn  to  them  for  evidence 
in  support  of  belief  in  a  physical  resurrec- 
tion from  the  grave  we  find  he  knows  noth- 
ing whatever  of  such  a  belief,  but  only  of 
belief  in  resurrection  from  the  dead.  In 
225 


THE    LIFE    OF    JESUS 

Corinth  that  belief — the  explanation  of  which 
let  me  reserve  for  a  moment — was  denied.^ 
So  Paul  proceeds  to  confute  these  sceptics.^ 
He  relates  a  succession  of  post-mortem  ap- 
pearances of  Jesus — first  to  Peter,  then  to 
the  twelve;  after  that  to  ''five  hundred 
brethren  at  once;  .  .  .  after  that  he  was 
seen  of  James;  then  of  all  the  apostles;  and 
last  of  all  he  was  seen  of  me  also."^  Yet 
in  this  enumeration — so  strikingly  precise,  as 
the  words  ''then,"  "after  that,"  "last  of 
all, ' '  indicate — Paul  makes  no  mention  of  the 
reports  of  the  women  at  the  tomb  nor  of  the 
appearances  there,  nor  of  that  on  the  road 
to  Enomaus,  nor  of  Jesus  eating  fish  in  the 
company  of  his  disciples.  Paul  knew  noth- 
ing of  an  empty  tomb,  or  of  the  visit  of  the 
women.  Yet  Paul  was,  for  fifteen  days,  the 
guest  of  Peter  in  Jerusalem.*  Surely  the 
latter  would  not  have  withheld  any  of  these 
details  from  Paul,  had  he  known  them.  Nor, 
again,  would  Paul  have  failed  to  make  use  of 
them  in  his  discussion  with  the  Corinthians, 

*  I  Cor.  15  :  12. 

'  I   Cor.    15  :  13   et  seq. 

*  I  Cor.  15  :  5-8. 

*  Gal.  1  :  18. 

226 


THE    RESURRECTION 

had  he  ever  heard  them  from  Peter  or  from 
any  other  source.  Nay,  more,  had  the  empty 
tomb  been  reported  to  Paul,  his  whole  argu- 
ment in  the  fifteenth  chapter  of  his  letter 
to  the  Corinthians  would  have  been  vitiated. 
Hence  we  conclude  that  these  details  given 
in  the  Gospels  of  Matthew  and  Luke  origin- 
ated later  than  the  time  of  Peter  and  Paul, 
who  knew  nothing  of  them. 

Equally  noteworthy  it  is  that  although 
twenty  years  after  Jesus'  death  a  tradition 
was  fixed  as  to  the  number  and  order  of  his 
post-crucifixion  appearances,  the  Synoptics 
overlook  most  of  them — the  appearance  to 
five  hundred  brethren,  to  James,  to  the 
twelve.  Yet  how  could  all  three  of  the  Gos- 
pel writers  have  happened  to  overlook  Paul's 
testimony  when  his  letter  to  the  Corinthian^ 
was  one  of  the  earliest  of  Christian  classics? 
How  could  Matthew  ever  slight  the  report  of 
Paul  for  that  of  certain  women  who  said 
they  had  seen  an  angel  and  that  they  had 
found  the  tomb  empty?  These  questions  can 
be  adequately  answered  only  on  the  ground 
that  the  narratives  of  a  physical  resurrec 
tion  eventually  displaced  the  statements  of 
227 


THE    LIFE    OF    JESUS 

Paul,  who  had  a  vision  of  Jesus  and  knew 
only  a  resurrection  from  the  dead  and  ap- 
parently construed  the  appearance  of  Jesus 
to  others  as  being  similar  to  the  vision  he 
beheld  on  the  way  to  Damascus. 

In  the  eighth  verse  of  the  chapter  just  re- 
ferred to  Paul  says  he  saw  Jesus. ^  But  how 
did  he  see  him  I  To  him  it  was  a  matter  of 
deep  regret  that  he  had  never  seen  Jesus  in 
the  flesh.2  Nowhere  does  he  claim  to  have 
seen  Jesus  between  his  resurrection  and  as- 
cension. Not  till  the  year  34  A.  D.,  when 
on  the  way  to  Damascus,  heresy-hunting,  did 
he  see  Jesus,  and  then  it  was,  as  he  says, 
in  a  vision.^  That  he  was  given  to  seeing 
visions  and  experiencing  various  kinds  of 
psychic  states,  he  himself  attests  in  his  sec- 
ond letter  to  the  Corinthians.*  May  not, 
then,  the  appearance  of  Jesus  to  Peter  and 
to  the  other  persons  of  which  Paul  tells  have 
been  of  the  same  vision-type  as  his  own? 
Particularly  noteworthy  is  the  fact  that  in 
Paul's  account  of  these  appearances,  ending 

»I  Cor.  9  :  1;  Gal.  1  :  12. 

» I  Cor.  15  :  8. 

•Acts  9  :  3-19;  22  :  6-21;   26  :  12-18;  I  Cor.    15  :  8. 

*  II  Cor.  12  :  1-4. 

228 


THE    RESURRECTION 

with  Ms  own  seeing  of  Jesus,  lie  does  not 
pause  to  distinguish  between  the  way  in 
which  he  saw  Jesus  and  the  manner  of  his 
appearing  to  the  other  favored  persons. 
From  this  we  are  led  to  infer  that,  in  his 
judgment,  there  was  no  essential  difference 
between  his  vision  of  Jesus  on  the  road  to 
Damascus  and  the  several  appearances  of 
Jesus  which  the  apostle  enumerated  so  pre- 
cisely and  in  chronological  order.  Paul,  then, 
does  not  testify  to  any  physical  resurrec- 
tion of  Jesus  from  the  tomb,  but  only  to  a 
vision  he  had  in  the  year  34  A.  D.  Nor 
does  he  anywhere  speak  of  any  such  resur- 
rection. 

We  have  thus  far  considered  the  evidence 
of  the  four  main  witnesses  with  reference 
to  the  miracle  of  a  physical  resurrection  of 
Jesus,  viz.,  the  Synoptists  and  the  Apostle 
Paul. 

What  value  are  we  justified  in  attaching  to 
their  testimony?  Suppose  the  case  were  that 
of  proving  the  signature  to  a  will  and  that 
the  plaintiff  produced  four  witnesses,  three 
of  whom  could  give  no  account  of  them- 
selves, while  the  testimony  of  the  fourth  con- 
229 


THE    LIFE    OF    JESUS 

tradicted  that  of  tlie  other  three  at  every 
crucial  point,  what  should  we  say?  Well, 
this  is  exactly  the  kind  of  evidence  we  have 
to  deal  with  here  in  the  records  relating  to 
the  resurrection  of  Jesus.  We  do  not  know 
who  wrote  the  Gospels,  nor  who,  if  anybody, 
saw  Jesus  after  his  crucifixion,  nor  how  he 
was  seen,  nor  when,  nor  where. 

Clearly,  then,  if  belief  in  a  physical  res- 
urrection of  Jesus  is  to  be  established,  it 
will  have  to  be  on  other  grounds  than  that 
of  New  Testament  evidence. 

Does  physical  science  furnish  the  needed 
testimony?  And  if  not,  can  historical  sci- 
ence give  us  any  warrant  for  the  belief  that 
Jesus'  dead  body  came  forth  from  the  tomb 
and  that  he  lived  again  in  the  flesh  among 
his  friends?  Physical  science  has  taught  us 
that  death  is  not  the  simple  thing  which  an 
unscientific  age  thought  it  to  be.  Eather  is 
it,  as  physiology  and  medical  investigations 
have  shown,  a  complicated  series  of  pro- 
cesses, putting  insurmountable  difficulties  in 
the  way  of  belief  in  a  physical  resurrection. 
The  dying  process  (and  in  Jesus'  case  it 
lasted  six  hours)  begins  with  the  nervous 
230 


THE    RESURRECTION 

system,  then  follow  the  glands  and  tissues, 
in  definite  order,  according  to  the  nature  of 
the  disease;  then  the  blood  coagulates  and 
the  muscle-plasm  becomes  increasingly  rigid; 
then  the  protoplasm  of  the  body  undergoes 
chemical  change  and  the  brain-neurons  are 
likewise  affected.  Hence  the  reanimation  of 
a  corpse,  after  an  interval  of  twelve  or  more 
hours,  would  involve  a  repetition,  in  reverse 
order,  of  all  these  processes.  To  suppose 
such  a  reversion  would  be,  as  President 
Stanley  Hall  of  Clark  University  has  said, 
'Ho  stultify  science  and  common  sense."  Did 
the  Fourth  Gospel  come  within  the  range  of 
our  investigation  we  should  have  occasion  to 
observe  further  that  physical  science  forbids 
the  belief  that  two  bodies  can  simultaneously 
occupy  the  same  space.  Yet  this  Gospel 
states  that  Jesus,  after  his  death,  appeared 
to  his  disciples  in  flesh  and  blood,  and,  as 
such,  passed  through  closed  doors  and  solid 
walls.^  Physical  science,  then,  compels  dis- 
belief in  a  physical  resurrection  of  Jesus. 
What,  now,  may  be  learned  from  historical 
science?    Concerned  with  the  origin  and  de- 

»  John    20  :  26. 

iG  231 


THE    LIFE    OF    JESUS 

velopment  of  religious  ideas,  it  makes  a 
most  valuable  contribution  to  our  subject. 
And  here  we  revert  to  that  distinction  re- 
ferred to  in  our  examination  of  Paul's  testi- 
mony, the  difference  between  resurrection 
from  the  grave  and  resurrection  from  the 
dead.  Historical  science  has  acquainted  us 
with  the  growth  of  the  Hebrew  conception 
of  Sheol  as  it  passed  from  Old  to  New  Tes- 
tament times.  Originally  it  was  believed 
that  after  death  all  human  souls,  good  and 
bad  alike,  descend  to  Sheol,  the  underworld, 
in  which  a  colorless,  shadowy,  monotonous 
existence  was  endured.  But  gradually  the 
conviction  arose,  and  it  was  well  established 
in  Jesus'  day,  that  the  good  and  bad  could 
not  occupy  the  same  place  nor  fare  in  exactly 
the  same  way.  Thus  Sheol  was  regarded, 
by  Jesus  and  his  contemporaries,  as  consist- 
ing of  two  sections,  called  Paradise  and 
Gehenna — as  we  already  had  occasion  to  ob- 
serve in  another  connection.  When  Jesus 
addressed  the  penitent  thief,  who  was  being 
crucified  at  his  side,  he  said:  ''This  day 
shalt  thou  be  with  me  in  Paradise,"  his  re- 
pentance entitling  him,  in  Jesus'  estimation, 
232 


THE    RESURRECTION 

to  escape  from  Gehenna.  This  was  separ- 
ated from  Paradise  by  a  gulf,  across  "which 
one  could  look,  speak  and  be  heard — as  we 
learn  from  Luke's  parable  of  the  rich  man 
and  Lazarus. 

But  life,  even  in  Paradise,  had  nothing 
about  it  that  one  should  desire  it,  for  though 
its  inhabitants  did  not  suffer  as  those  of 
Gehenna,  yet  they  experienced  none  of  the 
activities  and  joys  of  the  upper  world,  none 
of  its  aspirations  and  achievements.  Life 
was  empty,  aimless,  utterly  void  of  interest 
or  pleasure.  Hence,  by  an  altogether  natural 
process  there  arose  the  belief  that  they  who 
were  accounted  worthy  to  tenant  the  Para- 
dise section  of  Sheol  would  escape  to  the 
light  and  life  of  the  blessed  earth,  and  on 
the  morning  of  the  Messianic  era,  when  the 
Kingdom  of  God  would  be  established  there, 
enter  it,  in  company  with  all  the  just  and 
meek  then  dwelling  on  the  earth.  In  the 
chief  of  the  inter-biblical  Apocalypses,  the 
book  of  Enoch,  we  see  this  conception  in 
process  of  crystallization.  In  the  New  Tes- 
tament, profoundly  influenced  by  this  book,  it 
is  fully  formed  and  has  for  its  clearest  and 
233 


THE    LIFE    OF    JESUS 

most  persuasive  exponent  the  Apostle  Paul. 
Read  again  the  familiar  fifteenth  chapter  of 
his  first  letter  to  the  Corinthians,  the  one 
generally  read  at  orthodox  Christian  fu- 
nerals; read  it  in  the  light  that  historical 
science  has  shed  upon  its  central  ideas. 
''Christ,"  says  the  apostle,  as  he  proceeds 
with  his  argument  in  favor  of  belief  in  a 
resurrection  from  the  dead,  ''is  risen  from 
the  dead,  and  become  the  first-fruits  of  them 
that  slept."  In  other  words,  Christ  was  the 
first  to  ascend  from  Sheol,  where  life  was 
as  a  sleep,  devoid  of  all  positive  action. 
Then,  continues  the  Apostle,  they  who  have 
been  ' '  steadfast,  unmoveable,  always  abound- 
ing in  the  works  of  the  Lord,"  shall  be 
changed  "in  a  moment,  in  the  twinkling  of 
an  eye,  at  the  last  trump:  for  the  trumpet 
shall  sound,  and  the  dead  shall  be  raised," 
clothed  in  "celestial  bodies,"  to  join  Christ 
' '  at  his  coming. ' ' 

Only  in  the  first  epistle  to  the  Thessaloni- 
ans  do  we  find  these  thoughts  presented  with 
imagery  more  concrete  and  detailed.  The 
missionary  to  the  Gentiles,  seeking  to  con- 
sole those  who  have  misgivings  concerning 
234 


THE    RESURRECTION 

the  future  welfare  of  dear  ones  already  dead 
and  in  Sheol,  writes  that  ^'we  who  are  alive 
and  remain  on  earth  till  the  coming  of  the 
Christ"  shall  not  take  precedence  over  those 
who  have  died.  For  the  Lord  himself  will 
come  down  from  heaven  with  a  shout  and 
with  the  trump  of  God,  and  the  dead  in 
Christ  shall  be  the  first  to  rise,  i.  e.,  they 
who  believe  that  Jesus  is  the  Messiah  will 
be  the  first  to  ascend  from  Sheol  and  "rise 
up  in  the  clouds  to  meet  the  Lord  in  the  air. ' ' 
''Then  we  which  are  alive  and  remain  (on 
earth  surviving  the  deceased)  shall  be  caught 
up  together  with  them"  who  had  died.  "And 
so  shall  we  ever  be  with  the  Lord."^  In  the 
light  of  this  thrilling  belief  is  it  any  wonder 
that  expectancy  over  the  coming  of  the 
Christ  to  establish  his  Kingdom  should 
have  reached  an  unprecedented  level  of  in- 
tensity? 

Paul  and  his  contemporaries  were  literally 
possessed  by  the  mighty  hope  of  Messiah's 
speedy  advent. 

Hence  the  steadfast  gaze  into  the  heavens 
of  the  early  Christians,  watching  for  the  de- 

*  Thess.   4  :  13   et  seq. 

235 


THE    LIFE    OF    JESUS 

scent  of  the  Christ  on  the  clouds.^  Hence 
the  intensity  of  their  faith,  scorning  repeated 
disenchantments.  Hence,  too,  their  appeal 
to  prophecy,  drawing  strength  from  Old  Tes- 
tament passages  which  were  thought  to  re- 
fer to  the  great  expectation.^  Nay  more, 
Jesus  himself  is  reported  by  the  third  Evan- 
gelist as  himself  appealing  to  the  scriptures 
as  prophetic  of  his  destiny.  "And  he  said 
unto  them  (his  disciples) :  'Thus  it  is  written, 
and  thus  it  behooved  Christ  to  suffer,  and  to 
rise  from  the  dead.'  "^ 

From  what  has  been  thus  far  said  it  must 
be  clear  that  the  word  resurrection  as  used 
by  Jesus  and  his  contemporaries  signified  a 
rising  from  Sheol  and  not  at  all  any  physical 
resurrection  from  the  grave.  In  his  contro- 
versy with  the  Sadducees  on  the  question  of 
marriage  in  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven,  Jesus, 
in  harmony  with  the  current  Jewish  belief 
that  when  the  Messiah  should  come  all  soulo 
in  Sheol,  worthy  of  the  Kingdom,  would  rise 
and  enter  in,  uses  the  expression,  "When 

*  Acts  1  :  11. 

'1  Cor.    15  :  3;    Acts  2  :  25,  26;   13  :  34. 

» Luke  24  :  46. 

236 


THE    RESURRECTION 

they  shall  rise  from  the  dead."^  Such  being 
the  belief  of  that  time,  it  would  never  have 
occurred  to  the  disciples  to  go  to  the  tomb 
to  see  if  Jesus'  body  was  there.  They  had 
no  interest  in  his  body,  but  were  primarily 
concerned  with  his  descent  to  the  Paradise 
of  Sheol.  Could  he  possibly  be  confined  to 
the  underworld?  Must  he  not,  somehow, 
have  escaped  thence  and  ascended  to  heaven 
and  God?  And  will  he  not  return  to  earth 
and  usher  in  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven?  Must 
not  he,  of  all  men,  be  the  very  last  to  suffer 
confinement  in  Sheol?  Such  was  the  natural 
order  of  thought  that  preoccupied  the  dis- 
ciples' minds.  Think  only  of  their  conduct 
in  the  most  critical  hour  of  their  experience 
as  disciples  of  Jesus  and  how  inevitably 
would  just  such  reflections  and  questionings 
be! 

Utterly  dismayed  and  terrified  by  what 
transpired  in  the  garden  of  Gethsemane,  they 
had  deserted  their  Master  and  hastened  back 
to  Galilee  to  be  safely  removed  from  immi- 
nent danger.2  Arrived  at  the  scene  of  their 
discipleship,  where  every  familiar  spot  re- 

»Mark  12  :  25.  *Mark  14:  50;  Acts  1:  2. 

237 


THE    LIFE    OF    JESUS 

called  their  Master's  face  and  form  and  voice 
and  word,  a  reaction  inevitably  ensued.  Was 
there  nothing  to  lessen  or  neutralize  the 
shock  of  the  unspeakable  tragedy,  no  redeem- 
ing light  to  shine  in  upon  the  enveloping 
gloom?  Must  they  admit  that  the  chief 
priests  were  right,  that  the  sentence  pro- 
nounced was  just  and  the  deed  of  Calvary 
warranted?  No,  that  was  impossible,  incon- 
ceivable. If  he  was  not  what  they  believed 
him  to  be,  he  was  something  higher  than  they 
thought  him.  If  he  repudiated  their  way 
it  was  because  he  knew  a  better  through  suf- 
fering and  death.  Then  perish  the  idea  of 
his  retention  in  Sheol;  he  lives;  he  has  as- 
cended thence  into  heaven  and  there  awaits 
the  hour  of  his  return  to  complete  his  mis- 
sion! Had  not  Moses  and  Elijah  escaped 
confinement  in  Sheol  T  How  much  more  then 
must  he?  Had  not  the  Psalmist  sung: 
**Thou  wilt  not  leave  my  soul  in  Sheol,  nor 
suffer  thy  Holy  One  to  see  corruption ' '  ?  Be- 
lieving this  verse  to  refer  to  the  Messiah, 
and  that  Jesus  was  he,  the  meaning  of  the 
quotation  was  unmistakable.     Furthermore, 

» Jude  9. 

238 


THE    RESURRECTION 

in  the  exilian  Isaiah^  stood  the  passage — 
also  construed  as  Messianic  and  consequently 
applied  to  Jesus:  ''He  was  despised  and  re- 
jected of  men;  a  man  of  sorrows,  and  ac- 
quainted with  grief,"  ''smitten  and  af- 
flicted," "he  was  led  as  a  lamb  to  the  slaugh- 
ter," "he  shall  prolong  his  days,  and  the 
pleasure  of  the  Lord  shall  prosper  in  his 
hand,"  "he  hath  poured  out  his  soul  unto 
death." 

Thus  did  the  disciples,  by  appeal  to  their 
sacred  scriptures,  supplement  and  confirm 
their  conviction  of  the  deathlessness  of  their 
Master.  Not  only  was  it  beyond  all  possi- 
bility that  one  so  exalted,  so  exceptional  in 
character  and  ability,  should  keep  company 
with  the  dwellers  in  Sheol,  but  the  Old  Tes- 
tament had  predicted  the  impossibility  of  it 
centuries  before. 

Such,  I  take  it,  was  the  order  of  thought 
that  filled  their  minds.  How  else,  then, 
could  they  think  of  Jesus  except  as  alive  and 
incapable  of  permanent  death?  Was  not,  in 
truth,  their  experience  similar  to  oursf 
When  bending  over  the  body  of  one  excep- 

^  Isa.  53  :  3-12. 

239 


THE    LIFE    OF    JESUS 

tionally  dear  to  us,  or  standing  at  the  grave 
where  the  last  sad  rites  are  being  performed, 
our  skepticism  about  immortality,  present 
with  us  at  other  times,  leaves  us.  Then  is 
the  stone  of  unbelief  rolled  away  and  voices 
seem  to  whisper,  ''He  is  not  here;  he  is 
risen."  And  just  in  proportion  to  the  gran- 
deur of  the  life  that  has  departed  and  the 
depth  of  our  sense  of  dependence  upon  its 
inspiration,  so  will  be  the  intensity  of  our 
faith  that  the  beloved  life  perdures,  that ' '  the 
one  we  held  as  likest  God"  is  ''not  dust  mere- 
ly, that  returns  to  dust, ' '  but  essentially  spir- 
itual, and,  being  so,  cannot  perish.  Precisely 
so  was  it  with  the  disciples  of  Jesus.  They 
had  grown  to  regard  him  as  the  first  of  men 
and  to  feel  increasingly  dependent  upon  his 
influence.  Hence,  when  left  to  themselves  in 
Galilee,  memories  of  the  blessed  togetherness 
with  him  crowded  their  thought,  the  remem- 
brance of  what  he  was,  what  he  did,  what  he 
aimed  to  do,  what  he  had  left  unfinished, 
took  deep  hold  upon  their  hearts,  even 
to  the  point  of  persuading  them  to  his 
aliveness  and  his  resurrection  from  the  dead 
to  the  life  of  heaven,  certain  to  return 
240 


THE    RESURRECTION 

and  fulfil  Israel's  hope.  Had  he  not  said  that 
his  cause  would  soon  triumph,  that  a  genera- 
tion would  not  pass  away  until  the  redemp- 
tion of  Israel  would  be  accomplished,  the 
Kingdom  of  Heaven  established  on  the  earth, 
oppressors  punished,  and  the  meek  and  pure 
be  the  inheritors  of  the  promise  ?  For  a  time 
the  splendid  vision  had  been  eclipsed  by  the 
events  of  the  Passover  week.  The  cross 
seemed  to  symbolize  the  crucifixion  of  the 
long-cherished  hope.  He  had  gone  to  the 
realm  of  shades.  But  now,  from  the  depths 
of  the  disciples'  despair,  arose  the  mighty 
conviction  that  he  could  not  by  any  possibil- 
ity be  held  there  but  must  have  already  gone 
hence.  Let,  then,  the  word  of  the  hour  be 
''watch,  for  ye  know  not  at  what  time  the 
Son  of  Man  cometh."  Given  this  profound 
and  powerful  conviction,  and  it  needed  only 
a  rumor,  or  hint,  that  someone  had  seen  Jesus 
to  start  the  legend  of  a  physical  resurrection. 
Once  started,  it  would  spontaneously  grow 
and  take  on  a  variety  of  statement,  each  in- 
vested with  more  marvelous  detail  than  its 
predecessor,  precisely  as  we  have  seen  was 
the  case  with  other  narratives.  Thus  the 
241 


THE    LIFE    OF    JESUS 

story  of  a  physical  resurrection  from  the 
grave  folloived  the  spiritual  belief  of  the 
resurrection  of  Jesus  from  Sheol,  or  ''from 
the  dead,"  as  it  was  called.  It  is  particularly 
significant  that  the  first  person  said  to  have 
seen  Jesus  after  his  crucifixion  was  Peter, 
the  impulsive,  intense,  excitable,  mercurial 
Peter,  now  pained  beyond  measure  by  the 
memory  of  his  denial  of  his  Master.  Could 
anything  have  been  more  natural  for  a  disci- 
ple, so  constituted  and  having  the  terrible 
burden  of  disloyalty  and  deceit,  than,  upon 
his  return  from  Jerusalem  to  Galilee,  per- 
haps while  in  his  boat,  fishing,  to  have  had 
the  experience  of  a  vision  of  the  Master 
whom  he  had  followed  but,  at  the  end,  de- 
nied? All  the  more  probable  does  this  seem 
when  we  recall  the  fortnight's  visit  of  Paul 
to  Peter  at  Jerusalem.  Surely,  while  enter- 
taining his  guest,  Peter  must  have  heard 
from  him  the  story  of  his  experience  on  the 
way  to  Damascus.  And  in  whom,  more  than 
in  the  responsive,  susceptible  Peter,  would 
such  a  story  be  calculated  to  stimulate  the 
consciousness  of  a  kindred  vision  of  Jesus? 
Thus  Peter's  belief  in  a  physical  resurrec- 
242 


THE    RESURRECTION 

tion  of  Jesus  was  the  consequence,  not  the 
cause,  of  his  conviction  that  his  Master  was 
no  longer  in  Sheol  but  had  risen  from  the 
dead  and  that  therefore  a  resurrection  from 
despondency  and  despair  was  the  supreme 
need  of  the  hour  for  him  and  for  all  the  other 
disciples. 

They  all  alike  had  been  dull  of  understand- 
ing; now  they  were  aware  of  their  function 
in  the  world  as  perpetuators  of  the  Gospel 
of  their  Master.  They  had  fled  from  his 
cross,  now  they  were  strong  and  brave  to 
take  up  their  own  cross.  They  had  slept  in 
Gethsemane ;  now  they  were  awake  to  the  call 
of  the  hour.  They  had  been  sheep,  timidly 
following  the  shepherd ;  now  they  were  them- 
selves shepherds,  eager  to  give  their  lives  for 
the  sheep.  In  other  words,  the  legend  of  a 
physical  resurrection  of  Jesus  is  rooted  in  a 
great  spiritual  fact,  namely,  the  resurrection 
of  courage,  faith,  consecration  and  loyalty 
in  the  hearts  of  his  disciples ;  their  transfor- 
mation from  victims  of  discouragement  and 
despair  into  champions,  stalwart  and  un- 
daunted, of  a  deserted  cause.  Tracing  the 
story  of  a  physical  resurrection  of  Jesus  back 
243 


THE    LIFE    OF    JESUS 

to  its  original  source  we  reach  at  last  this 
spiritual  fact  of  the  revived  courage  and 
faith  in  the  hearts  of  his  disciples.  From 
this  followed  directly  a  transformation  of 
cowards  into  heroes.  From  this,  again, 
coupled  with  the  consciousness  of  what  Jesus 
was  to  them  and  in  himself,  there  arose  the 
belief  that  he  could  not  be  still  in  Sheol,  but 
must  have  arisen  and  ascended  to  heaven. 
From  this  belief,  in  turn,  sprang  the  further 
belief,  originating  with  Peter,  that  Jesus  had 
been  seen;  and  from  this  there  was  eventu- 
ally evolved  the  legend  of  a  physical  resur- 
rection. 

No  feature  of  the  records  which  report  the 
experiences  of  the  disciples  and  of  Paul  is 
more  firmly  established  than  the  fact  of  sev- 
eral appearances  of  Jesus  soon  after  his  cru- 
cifixion, recounted  in  part  by  the  Synoptics 
and  in  part  by  Paul,  in  his  first  letter  to  the 
Corinthians.  These  appearances  are  as  well 
authenticated  as  any  fact  of  ancient  history. 
They  were,  moreover,  the  immediate  cause 
of  the  founding  of  the  Christian  church.  All 
scholars,  conservative  and  radical,  are  agreed 
upon  this  point.  The  only  question  under  de- 
244 


THE    RESURRECTION 

bate  is  the  character  of  these  appearances, 
i.  e.,  were  they  veridical,  or  were  they  only 
hallucinations?  This,  to  be  sure,  is  a  prob- 
lem lying  outside  the  range  of  Biblical  criti- 
cism. It  belongs  to  the  province  of  psychical 
research.  And  though  it  seems  likely  to  re- 
main an  open  question,  the  researches  of  psy- 
chical science  may  increase  or  diminish  the 
probability  of  a  veridical  appearance  of 
Jesus.  Be  this  as  it  may,  the  vital  point  to 
be  observed  is  that  all  future  discussion  of 
the  resurrection  narratives  will  hinge  on  a 
problem  in  psychical  research.  The  day  of 
controversy  over  a  stupendous  miracle  of 
which  the  accounts  are  hopelessly  contradic- 
tory has  passed,  and  inquiry  henceforth  can 
concern  only  the  appearances  of  Jesus  to  his 
disciples  and  to  Paul.  And  these  appear- 
ances attest  the  intense  power  of  Jesus* 
spirit  over  the  springs  of  veneration  and  love 
in  the  hearts  of  his  followers.  So  grandly  has 
he  lived  and  died,  so  deep  and  strong  was  the 
hold  he  took  upon  the  lives  of  the  disciples 
and  Paul  that  a  vision  of  him  was  the  most 
natural  and  inevitable  of  experiences,  while  a 
legend  of  his  physical  reappearance  after 
245 


THE    LIFE    OF    JESUS 

death  was  the  spontaneous  and  irresistible 
sequel  of  the  vision.  Hence  it  would  seem 
that  we  shall  make  the  best  use  of  the  resur- 
rection narratives  when  we  see  in  them  illus- 
trations of  the  truth  that  spirituality  of  life 
is  the  root  of  faith  in  its  eternality,  that  soul- 
greatness  and  death  are  mutually  exclusive 
terms,  and  that  the  more  fully  we  live  the 
spiritual  life  the  more  persuaded  we  become 
of  the  imperishability  of  what  alone  gives 
worth  to  human  souls. 

And  now,  in  conclusion,  let  us  sum  up,  seri- 
ally, the  results  to  which  our  deliberations 
have  brought  us. 

1.  The  evidence  furnished  by  the  Bible 
records  at  our  command  is  inadequate  to 
support  belief  in  a  physical  resurrection  of 
Jesus. 

2.  Both  physical  and  historical  science 
compel  disbelief  in  a  physical  resurrection. 

3.  Jesus  and  Paul  understood  by  the  word 
resurrection  just  what  it  had  signified  for 
centuries  among  the  Jews,  namely,  ascent 
from  Sheol. 

4.  The  accounts  given  in  the  Gospels  of  a 
physical  resurrection  of  Jesus  originated  in 

246 


THE    RESURRECTION 

accordance  with  the  familiar  law  of  legen- 
dary growth,  after  Paul's  time,  and  after  the 
belief  in  the  resurrection  of  Jesus  from 
Sheol  had  been  established  in  the  minds  of 
his  disciples. 

5.  This  belief  in  the  escape  of  Jesus  from 
Sheol  was  not  the  cause,  but  the  consequence, 
of  the  revival  of  courage  and  faith  in  the 
hearts  of  the  disciples.  But  for  this  belief 
the  disciples  would  not  have  rallied  from 
their  grief  and  their  abandonment  of  Jesus' 
cause.  This  belief  was,  indeed,  the  bridge 
that  spanned  the  chasm  between  the  death  of 
Jesus  and  the  birth  of  organized  Christian- 
ity. 

6.  Legends  of  a  physical  resurrection  are 
therefore  the  dress  in  which  belief  in  a  res- 
urrection from  Sheol  was  clothed. 

7.  Christianity,  then,  was  not  fundamen- 
tally based  upon  a  fiction  or  on  the  delusion 
of  two  or  three  women,  beside  themselves 
with  grief ;  much  less  did  Christianity  begin 
with  a  deliberate  imposture.  It  arose  from  a 
great  fact,  a  spiritual,  not  a  material,  fact, 
from  which  other  genuine,  historical  facts 
followed,    the   whole   constituting   the    total 

17  247 


THE    LIFE    OF    JESUS 

spiritual  starting-point  of  the  Christian  re- 
ligion. First,  the  thought  of  Jesus'  person- 
ality and  influence  as  it  came  to  the  disciples 
after  the  desertion  of  their  Master  in  Geth- 
semane.  Their  thoughts  of  this  gave  rise  to 
the  conviction  that  he  could  not  be  still  in 
Sheol,  but  must  have  risen — a  conviction  re- 
inforced by  reference  to  prophecy,  history, 
and  the  Psalms.  From  this  conviction  fol- 
lowed an  immediate  transformation  of  the 
disciples,  from  despairing  cowards  into  cou- 
rageous heralds  of  the  belief  that  Jesus  was 
alive  in  heaven  and  that  he  would  soon  re- 
turn to  complete  his  mission.  Finally,  from 
this  transformation  of  the  disciples  and  the 
heralding  of  their  belief  in  the  ascent  of 
Jesus  from  Sheol  to  heaven  and  his  speedy 
return  to  earth,  there  were  appearances  of 
Jesus  to  Peter  and  to  other  disciples.  And 
from  the  reports  of  these,  the  legends  of  a 
physical  resurrection  were  eventually  shaped 
as  we  find  them  in  the  Gospels. 

8.     Christianity,   therefore,   is   proved   to 
have  been  rooted  in  one  of  the  finest  intui- 
tions of  the  human  heart,  one  that  survives 
all  our  critical  analysis  of  the  records  and  all 
248 


THE    RESURRECTION 

our  scientific  observations,  namely,  that  the 
more  spiritual  the  life  the  less  can  we  think 
of  it  as  perishing.  For  Jesus  lived  so 
grandly  and  so  gloriously  as  to  have  made 
his  disciples  certain  of  his  immortality  and 
of  the  deathlessness  of  his  cause. 


VIII 

JESUS  AND  PAUL  AS   FOUNDERS   OF  CHRIS- 
TIANITY 

Jesus  lived  and  died  a  Jew.  Nothing  was 
further  from  his  thought  and  purpose  than 
a  break  with  Judaism.  He  professed  to  in- 
troduce no  new  doctrine,  he  established  no 
new  religion.  There  is  not  a  single  authen- 
tic passage  in  the  Gospels  to  support  the  be- 
lief that  Jesus  ever  founded,  or  even  thought 
of  founding,  a  church.  Had  he  taken  any 
steps  toward  establishing  a  religious  institu- 
tion of  any  kind  we  would  certainly  have 
known  of  it.  Nay,  more,  his  own  disciples 
never  deserted  Judaism,  but  carried  on  their 
work  within  its  limits  and  with  no  thought  of 
founding  a  new  religion. 

The  famous  saying  attributed  to  Jesus  by 
the  author  of  the  Gospel  according  to  Mat- 
thew— and  only  by  him — to  the  effect  that  his 
disciple  Simon  should  be  known  as  Peter, 
250 


FOUNDERS    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

and  that  on  this  "rock"  (a  verbal  play  upon 
the  name)  would  Jesus  found  his  church^ — 
this  saying  is  obviously  spurious,  and  is  so 
regarded  by  all  representatives  of  the  higher 
criticism.  Jesus  would  hardly  have  called 
Simon  ''a  rock"  and  then  a  moment  later, 
almost  in  the  same  breath,  ''Satan,"  as  we 
see  on  comparing  the  first  and  last  verses  of 
the  passage  in  which  the  august  saying  ap- 
pears.2  Nor  does  it  seem  at  all  likely,  or  in 
keeping  with  the  recognized  spirit  and  char- 
acter of  Jesus,  that  he  would  have  conferred 
upon  any  one  of  his  disciples  exclusively, 
least  of  all  upon  the  unstable  Peter,  the  right 
' '  to  bind  and  to  loose. ' '  Much  more  reason- 
able is  it  to  believe  what  the  same  evangelist 
reports  in  a  subsequent  chapter,  namely,  that 
this  privilege  was  accorded  to  all  the  disci- 
ples.^ Moreover,  the  character  of  Peter  was 
much  more  truly  symbolized  by  a  reed  than 
by  a  rock.  The  fact,  too,  that  neither  the 
Markan  nor  the  Lucan  Gospel  contains  the 
passage  tends  to  weaken  still  more  its  credi- 
bility. 

» Matt.   16  :  18-19.  »  Matt.  16 :  18,  23. 

•Matt.  18:  18. 

251 


THE   LIFE    OF   JESUS 

Again,  it  is  quite  certain  tliat  Jesus  cannot 
be  held  in  the  least  responsible  for  that  con- 
geries of  systems  seen  in  the  sects  of  Chris- 
tianity, nor  would  it  be  other  than  prepos- 
terous to  suppose  that  were  he  to  return  to 
earth  he  would  recognize  or  understand  the 
exclusive  claims,  the  colossal  machinery  and 
the  stately  pomp  which  characterize  the  sac- 
erdotal churches  of  Christendom.  Nor,  agaiil, 
can  Jesus  be  accounted  the  originator  of  any 
of  the  historic  beliefs  and  practices  that  are 
typical  of  Christianity.  The  belief  that  man 
is  inherently,  constitutionally  evil  and  that 
his  only  hope  of  redemption  lies  in  the  be- 
stowal upon  him  of  a  supernatural  "grace"; 
the  belief  that  the  Church  is  the  door  through 
which  all  must  pass  who  would  enjoy  union 
with  God  and  Christ — these  are  typical 
Christian  beliefs,  yet  not  one  of  them  can  be 
traced  back  to  Jesus.  They  all  alike  orig- 
inated in  the  message  of  the  apostle  Paul,  to 
whom  human  nature  was  corrupt  and  doomed 
unless  supernaturally  saved — a  conception, 
as  we  shall  see,  wholly  foreign  to  the  thought 
of  Jesus.  And  the  same  must  be  said  of 
those  religious  practices  that  are  peculiarly 
252 


FOUNDERS    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

Christian — prayer  offered  ' '  through  Christ, ' ' 
or  in  his  name;  worship  of  Christ;  baptism 
and  the  Lord's  Supper,  as  sacraments,  or  in- 
dispensable channels  through  which  Divine 
Grace  is  vouchsafed  to  the  believers — these 
typically  Christian  practices  had  their  gene- 
sis not  in  Jesus,  but  in  the  ministry  of  Paul 
and  his  successors. 

He  held  that  no  one  could  come  into  com- 
munion with  God  except  through  Christ,^  a 
view  which  led,  at  a  later  day,  to  the  direct 
worship  of  Christ,  as  God.  And  from  his  let- 
ter to  the  Corinthians  we  learn  how  Paul  con- 
verted the  common  meal  of  the  brethren,  the 
love-feast,  or  ''Agape,"  into  a  sacrament  by 
connecting  it  with  his  theory  of  human  re- 
demption.2 

Clearly  then,  the  old  Jewish  religion,  at 
its  best,  was  sufficient  for  Jesus.  I  put  stress 
upon  the  words  ' 'at  its  best"  because  we  must 
transcend  the  limits  of  the  Old  Testament 
and  read  the  non-canonical  religious  litera- 
ture of  the  two  centuries  preceding  the  birth 
of  Jesus  to  see  the  Jewish  religion  at  its 

*Eom.  6,  et  passim. 
*I  Cor.  10,  11. 

253 


THE    LIFE    OF    JESUS 

best;  literature,  with  the  substance  of  which 
Jesus  had  some  acquaintance,  as  is  proved  by 
the  discovery  that  certain  precepts,  in  the 
Sermon  on  the  Mount  and  in  other  discourses 
of  Jesus,  derive  from  this  inter-biblical  litera- 
ture. 

The  Jewish  religion,  at  its  best,  taught  rev- 
erence, peace,  justice,  mercy,  love;  and  so 
did  Jesus.  All  that  remained  to  be  done  was 
to  make  this  religion  sufficient  for  all  men 
everywhere;  and  to  this  universalizing  task 
Jesus  addressed  himself.  He  freed  popular 
Judaism  from  its  narrow  provincialism,  its 
excessive  ceremonialism,  its  slavish  tradi- 
tionalism. He  brought  to  the  surface  the 
deeper  implications  of  the  so-called  Mosaic 
Law,  more  especially  with  reference  to  mur- 
der, adultery,  and  the  attitude  to  be  assumed 
toward  enemies.^  He  lifted  the  morality  of 
the  spirit,  with  its  stress  on  motives  and  in- 
ner dispositions,  out  from  the  mass  of  legal- 
ism in  which  it  lay  buried,  and  made  it  the 
cornerstone  of  his  gospel.^  Not  even  the 
great  Hillel,  who  was  an  old  man  when  Jesus 

^  Matt.  5  :  21  et  seq. 
' Matt.  6  :2  et  seq. 

254 


FOUNDERS    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

was  a  little  boy,  was  equal  to  the  task  of 
achieving  this  necessary  advance.  He  indeed 
might  have  done  it,  as  Prof.  Toy  suggests, 
had  he  not  been  so  steeped  in  Jewish  legal- 
ism.^ 

Hence  it  was  reserved  for  Jesus  to  tran- 
scend the  reach  of  the  illustrious  Rabbi,  to 
manifest  that  genius  which  penetrates,  re- 
veals, interprets,  and  to  exhibit  an  originality 
as  genuine  as  it  is  rare.  Even  as  the  su- 
preme merit  of  the  tree  consists  in  its  draw- 
ing from  the  surrounding  earth  and  air  the 
materials  wherewith  to  build  the  strength  of 
its  trunk  and  the  beauty  of  its  foliage,  so  the 
transcendent  merit  of  Jesus  lay  in  his  draw- 
ing from  earlier  and  contemporary  literature 
the  materials  wherewith  to  make  his  gospel 
a  source  of  strength  and  inspiration,  stamp- 
ing what  he  borrowed  with  the  spiritual 
genius  of  his  own  wondrous  personality. 

Thus  Jesus  lived  and  died  a  loyal  Jew, 
nurtured  in  the  traditions  of  his  faith,  proud 
of  its  heritage,  faithful  to  its  requirements, 
devoted  to  its  ideals.  Being  the  latest  in  a 
long  line  of  Jewish  prophets,  his  aim  would 

*C.  H.  Toy:     "Judaism  and  Christianity,"  pp.  260-267. 

255 


THE    LIFE    OF    JESUS 

naturally  be  not  to  destroy,  but  to  carry  out 
the  Law,  to  unfold  the  deeper  meanings  of 
the  religion  transmitted  by  the  fathers  and 
bring  it  to  full-flowering.  Had  his  fellow- 
countrymen  heeded  his  gospel  of  repentance, 
righteousness  and  outreach  toward  perfec- 
tion, Judaism  would  have  entered  upon  a  new 
career  of  influence  and  power.  But  the  lead- 
ers of  the  Jewish  people  had  a  different  ideal 
for  the  nation,  and  so  Jesus  died  in  brave 
and  solitary  allegiance  to  his  own  ideal. 

After  his  death  his  disciples  proclaimed 
their  belief  in  his  resurrection,  his  ascension 
to  heaven  and  his  early  return  to  earth  to 
fulfil  the  function  of  Messiah.  These  disci- 
ples were,  of  course,  Jews,  differing  from 
their  coreligionists  chiefly  in  this  one  partic- 
ular, the  belief  that  Jesus  was  the  Messiah. 
All  Jews  believed  in  the  coming  of  a  Messiah, 
but  none  save  these  disciples,  and  the  con- 
verts they  made,  believed  that  Jesus  was  he. 
Thus  there  arose,  within  the  pale  of  Judaism, 
a  sect  whose  members  differed  from  all  other 
Jews  in  this  one  respect — they  believed  that 
Jesus  was  the  Messiah  and  that  he  would 
soon  reappear  in  that  capacity.  This  Messi- 
256 


FOUNDERS    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

anic  movement  was  therefore  the  germ  out 
of  which  eventually  a  new  religion  was 
evolved.  Be  it  noted  that  the  primary  aim 
of  this  Messianic  movement  was  not  to  teach 
and  spread  the  gospel  of  Jesus,  but  to  con- 
vince all  disbelieving  Jews  that  Jesus  was  the 
Messiah,  that  he  had  risen,  ascended  to 
heaven,  and  would  soon  return  to  earth  to 
inaugurate  the  Messianic  kingdom.  It  is 
therefore  plain  that  Jesus  cannot  be  regarded 
as  the  founder  of  this  movement,  because  his 
primary  aim  was  to  prepare  men  for  mem- 
bership in  the  coming  Kingdom  of  Heaven. 
Hitherto,  then,  there  was  no  thought  on  the 
part  of  the  believers  in  the  Messiahship  of 
Jesus  of  organizing  an  independent  religious 
movement.  These  believers  were  simply  a 
sect  of  Judaism  and  nicknamed  ' '  Nazarenes '  * 
by  non-sympathizing  Jews.^  But  while  no 
one  had  as  much  as  thought  of  launching  a 
new  religion  upon  the  world,  the  rapid 
growth  of  this  Jewish  sect  in  Jerusalem  and 
its  steady  spread,  far  beyond  the  confines  of 
the  capital,  struck  fear  into  the  hearts  of  its 
opponents.     They  saw  the  possibility  of  an 

» Acts  24  :  5. 

257 


THE    LIFE    OF    JESUS 

absorption  of  Judaism  into  Nazarenism ;  they 
felt  that  the  integrity  and  permanence  of  his- 
toric Judaism  were  jeopardized.  To  check 
the  growing  heresy  and  stamp  it  out,  a  cam- 
paign of  persecution  was  hopefully  decreed 
by  the  authorities  of  traditional  Judaism  and 
passionately  entered  upon  by  its  devotees. 
Most  conspicuous  among  the  persecutors  of 
Nazarenism  was  a  young  man  named  Saul, 
later  called  Paul.^ 

He  was  born  about  the  year  2  B.  C.  at  Tar- 
sus, in  Cappadocia,  a  province  of  Asia  Minor. 
Tarsus  was  a  university  town,  the  birthplace 
of  several  Stoic  philosophers  and  of  the  poet 
Aratus,  whom  Paul  quoted  in  his  speech  on 
Mars  Hill.^  He  was  born  of  pure  Jewish 
blood,  for  he  called  himself  ' '  a  Hebrew  of  the 
Hebrews."  As  an  index  of  his  orthodoxy 
we  have  his  description  of  himself  as  ''a 
Pharisee  of  the  Pharisees."  A  Roman  citi- 
zen he  was,  withal,  having  inherited  the  priv- 
ilege from  his  father,  a  civil  right  which 
proved  of  great  practical  value  to  him  toward 

^Probably  because  he  became  the  apostle  to  the  Gentiles 
the  Hebrew  name  "Saul"  was  changed  to  the  Gentilo 
(Eoman)   name  "Paul." 

^Acts  17  :  28. 

258 


FOUNDERS    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

the  end  of  his  life,  permitting  him,  on  the 
occasion  of  his  arrest  and  imprisonment,  to 
carry  his  case  to  the  emperor  at  Rome.^  Edu- 
cated at  Jerusalem,  under  Gamaliel,  the 
grandson  of  Hillel,  he  was  exceptionally  well 
versed  in  the  literature  of  his  people.  His 
first  public  appearance  was  at  the  stoning  of 
Stephen,  a  member  of  the  sect  of  Nazarenes, 
converted  from  his  Greek  religion  to  belief 
in  the  Messiahship  of  Jesus  and  a  powerful 
exponent  of  the  new  faith.  In  one  of  his 
speeches  he  had  declared  that  when  Jesus 
returned  to  earth  he  would  do  away  with  the 
ancient  institutions  dating  from  Moses.  This 
radical  utterance  was  promptly  construed  as 
blasphemy,  and  without  further  ado  Stephen 
was  stoned  to  death  in  accordance  with  the 
provision  of  the  Law  concerning  blasphemy. 
And  they  who  were  directly  involved  in  this 
persecution  unto  death  ^' laid  their  coats  down 
at  the  feet  of  a  young  man  whose  name  was 
Saul. ' '  2  Immediately  upon  the  death  of  the 
Nazarene  martyr  a  general  persecution  of 
the  sect  ensued  in  Jerusalem,  and  its  mem- 

^  Acts  28  :  19. 
'Acts  7  :  58,  • 

259 


THE    LIFE    OF    JESUS 

bers  became  scattered  over  all  the  adjoining 
provinces  of  Galilee  and  Samaria.^  And  now 
it  was  that  this  young  man  reveals  himself  as 
the  most  intensely  active  of  all  the  perse- 
cutors. In  his  letter  to  the  Galatians,  writ- 
ten some  fifteen  years  after  his  entrance 
upon  this  persecuting  campaign,  Paul  tells 
us  "how  that  beyond  measure  he  persecuted 
the  church  of  God  and  wasted  it. "  ^  Else- 
where ^  we  read  the  statement  that  he  felt  a 
very  ''frenzy  of  hate"  for  these  Nazarenes, 
** breathing  threatening  and  slaughter,"  an 
expression  which  has  not  inaptly  been  com- 
pared to  the  snorting  of  a  war-horse  before 
the  battle.  So  deep-seated  was  Paul's  en- 
mity toward  these  heretics,  who  called  them- 
selves Jews  and  yet  believed  Jesus  was  the 
Messiah,  that  he  arrested  those  who  made 
public  confession  of  this  creed,  construing 
that  confession  as  blasphemy.  Nay,  more, 
he  entered  the  private  residences  of  persons 
suspected  of  holding  this  belief,  dragged 
them  forth  to  trial  and,  in  some  cases,  voted 

*  Acts  8  :1  et  seq. 
'Gal.  1  :  13. 

•  Acts  8  :2  et  seq. 

260 


FOUNDERS    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

for  their  death.  Not  content  with  these  re- 
sults, but  hearing  that  the  heresy  had  spread 
as  far  north  as  Damascus,  he  obtains  a  per- 
mit from  the  high-priest,  authorizing  him  to 
go  thither  and  bring  the  apostles  back  to  Je- 
rusalem for  punishment.  But  on  his  way  his 
mission  suddenly  ends,  the  purpose  for  which 
he  went  breaks  down.  He  tells  us  that,  as  he 
was  nearing  Damascus,  he  saw  a  light  in  the 
sky,  from  out  of  which  came  a  voice,  saying 
**Saul,  Saul,  why  persecutest  thou  me?" 
And  Saul  said:  ''Who  art  thou?"  To  which 
the  vision  replied,  ''I  am  Jesus  whom  thou 
persecutest;  it  is  hard  for  thee  to  kick 
against  the  goad. ' '  Thereupon  the  would-be 
exterminator  of  the  Nazarenes  became  blind 
and  remained  so  for  the  space  of  three  days, 
so  that  the  friends  who  were  with  him,  but 
who  saw  nothing,  had  to  lead  him  into -the 
city.^ 

This  experience  marked  the  beginning  of 
Paul's  break  with  Judaism,  his  conversion  to 
the  faith  of  the  Nazarenes,  and  then  the  in- 
auguration of  a  new  religion  to  be  eventually 
known    as    Christianity.      Not   until    Naza- 

^  Compare  Acts  9  :  7  and  22  :  9. 

261 


THE    LIFE    OF    JESUS 

renism  had  broken  with  Judaism  did  the 
necessary  condition  exist  for  a  specifically 
Christian  religion.  The  facts  of  religious 
psychology  fully  attest  the  credibility  of 
Paul's  experience.  Consulting  the  testi- 
mony of  Professors  James,  Starbuck,  God- 
dard  and  other  experts  in  the  field  of  psy- 
chology, we  observe  that  never  has  it  been 
an  uncommon  thing  for  people  to  see  a  light 
or  hear  a  voice  and  thereupon  experience  a 
change  of  heart  or  a  change  of  religious  be- 
lief. In  the  case  of  Paul,  we  can  account  for 
his  ''vision"  in  terms  of  (a)  his  tempera- 
ment, (b)  his  observations  as  a  persecutor  in 
Jerusalem,  and  (c)  his  inner,  moral  experi- 
ence. Consider  with  me,  briefly,  each  of 
these  agencies.  Paul  was  a  distinctly  nerv- 
ous person,  a  man  given,  he  tells  us,^  to 
strafe  neurotic  experiences,  of  the  nature  of 
visions  or  trances.  Moreover,  he  tells  us  he 
was  afflicted  with  a  species  of  hysteria  which 
seriously  handicapped  him  in  his  missionary 
labors.^  These  facts  serve  to  account  for  his 
experience  so  far  as  its  physical  origin  is 

»Act3  22  :  17;  9  :  12. 
»II  Cor.  12  :  7. 

262 


FOUNDERS    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

concerned.  To  explain  its  psychological  as- 
pect we  recall,  first,  the  stoning  of  Stephen, 
at  which  he  was  present,  assisting  those  who 
conducted  the  lapidation.  On  the  way  to  Da- 
mascus the  remembrance  of  all  that  he 
then  witnessed  must  have  come  to  him, 
and  not  least,  perhaps,  the  singularly 
trustful,  tranquil  expression  on  the  face 
of  the  dying  martyr,  to  which  the 
writer  of  the  book  of  Acts  so  feelingly 
referred.^  The  prayer,  also, '' Father,  lay  not 
this  sin  to  their  charge"  ^  (prototype  of  the 
prayer  on  the  cross,  attributed  to  Jesus  by 
the  evangelist  Luke)  breathed  by  the  dying 
Stephen,  Paul  must  have  heard  and  perhaps 
now  recalled.  Surely  we  do  not  err  in  think- 
ing that  on  the  way  to  Damascus  the  remem- 
brance of  that  face  and  that  prayer  haunted 
the  mind  and  heart  of  Paul.  Then,  too,  as 
a  highly  educated  Pharisee  he  was  familiar 
with  the  exilian  Isaiah's  description  of  the 
righteous  remnant  of  Israel,  personified  as 
"the  suffering  servant  of  Yahweh,"  who  by 
his  suffering  atoned  for  the  sins  of  the  na- 

^  Acts  7  :  55 ;   6  :  15. 
'  Acts  7  :  58-60. 

18  263 


THE    LIFE    OF    JESUS 

tion.  Could  it  then  be  that  this  Jesus  was 
such  a  suffering  servant,  that  God  sided  with 
Jesus  and  that  his  crucifixion,  far  from  being 
a  punishment  for  blasphemy  and  imposture, 
was  a  sacrifice,  a  propitiation  for  the  sins  of 
Israel?  And,  if  so,  then  the  Nazarenes  were 
right  in  their  view  of  Jesus  as  the  Messiah, 
and  his  death  involved  more  than  had  been 
realized.  Some  such  reasoning  as  this,  the 
dim,  vague  foreshadowing  of  Paul's  later 
thought,  may  well  have  been  part  of  his  pre- 
occupation on  that  memorable  journey  of  one 
hundred  and  thirty-six  miles,  affording 
ample  opportunity  for  theological  speculation 
no  less  than  for  memories  of  past  persecu- 
tions. But  we  come  now  to  an  inner  moral 
experience  which  I  am  persuaded  takes  prece- 
dence over  both  the  other  causes  of  his  con- 
version, an  experience  which  the  apostle  de- 
scribed in  terms  of  a  Greek  proverb:  ''It  is 
hard  for  thee  to  kick  against  the  goad."  The 
allusion  is  to  an  incident  in  agricultural  life, 
quite  common  in  oriental  countries  even  to 
this  day.  The  farmer  driving  the  ox  took 
the  plough  by  the  right  hand,  and  in  his  left 
he  carried  a  pointed  stick  to  prod  or  goad  the 
264 


FOUNDERS    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

ox  to  steady  drawing  of  the  plough.  When 
the  farmer  pricked  the  ox  rather  severely 
he  kicked  against  the  goad.  Applied  to 
Paul's  experience,  the  proverb  means  that  it 
was  exceedingly  difficult  for  him  to  suppress 
the  haunting  conviction  that  the  Nazarenes 
were  right  no  matter  how  violently  he  per- 
sisted in  his  persecuting  campaign.  That 
haunting  suspicion  of  the  correctness  of  the 
Nazarenes'  position  was  the  goad  that  se- 
verely pricked  his  mind.  And  the  kick 
against  this  goad  was  the  persistence  with 
which  he  engaged  in  persecuting  these  peo- 
ple, every  fresh  suspicion  that  they  were 
right  being  instantly  met  with  new  determi- 
nation to  persecute  them  more  zealously  than 
ever.  But  it  becomes  increasingly  more  dif- 
ficult to  down  the  haunting  belief,  to  kick 
against  the  goad;  at  last  it  is  hopelessly 
abandoned  and  the  erstwhile  persecutor  be- 
comes the  foremost  of  defenders  and  cham- 
pions. Unable  to  suppress  and  stamp  out  the 
ever-recurring  conviction,  he  is  finally  over- 
mastered by  it,  and  the  conflict  culminates 
for  Paul,  with  his  nervous  temperament  and 
susceptibility  to  trances,  in  the  familiar  epi- 
265 


THE    LIFE    OF    JESUS 

sode  related  three  times  in  tlie  book  of  Acts 
and  once  in  the  first  letter  to  the  Corinthians. 

Just  as  a  period  of  inward  disquietude  and 
struggle  preceded  the  mighty  change  wrought 
in  the  apostle,  so  a  long  period  of  tranquil 
self -collecting  and  study  followed  it.^  Not 
immediately  could  he  go  forth  to  preach  the 
gospel.  There  were  questions  to  be  an- 
swered, doubts  to  be  settled,  convictions  to 
be  clearly  and  firmly  grasped. 

No  wonder,  then,  that  after  his  revolution- 
izing experience  Paul  should  have  sought  se- 
clusion and  solitude,  to  the  end  that  he  might 
adjust  himself  to  his  new  religious  environ- 
ment, grasp  the  full  significance  of  his  con- 
version and  shape  his  plans  for  the  mission- 
ary work  to  which  all  his  splendid  energies 
would  be  henceforth  devoted. 

Accordingly  he  retires  for  three  years  to 
the  Outlying  region  of  Damascus,  and  the 
fruit  of  that  seclusion  is  found  in  the  ma- 
tured thought  of  his  epistles. 

On  emerging  from  this  retirement  and 
study  he  preaches  in  the  city  of  Damascus, 

*  Gal.  1  :  17,  18. 

266 


FOUNDERS    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

barely  escaping  with  his  life.^  After  visit- 
ing the  disciples  at  Jerusalem  he  returns  to 
his  native  city,  from  which,  after  ten  years, 
he  is  summoned  to  Antioch  to  assist  in  the 
work  of  this  most  important  and  promising 
missionary  outpost,  established  under  the 
auspices  of  the  community  of  brethren  in 
Jerusalem.  Here  at  Antioch  it  was  that  the 
disciples  of  Jesus  and  their  converts  were 
first  called  ''Christians,"  the  local  Gentiles 
using  the  word  as  a  nickname.  For  this 
datum  concerning  the  original  use  of  the 
name  we  are  indebted  to  the  compiler  of  the 
book  of  Acts,  where,  in  the  twenty-sixth 
verse  of  the  eleventh  chapter,  we  read,  ''the 
disciples  were  called  Christians  first  in  An- 
tioch. ' '  This  was  in  the  year  47  or  48  A.  D. 
From  this  city  it  was  that,  soon  after  his  ar- 
rival, Paul  started  on  the  first  of  that  series 
of  missionary  journeys  which  constituted  his 
calling  for  the  remainder  of  his  life  and 
which  brought  the  Christian  gospel  of  sal- 
vation to  Asia  Minor,  Greece,  and  Rome.  He 
traveled  almost  incessantly  for  nearly  twenty 
years,  incurring  dangers  on  land  and  at  sea, 

^Gal.  1  :  18;   II  Cor.  11  :  32-33. 
267 


THE    LIFE    OF    JESUS 

enduring  incredible  hardships,  thrust  into  the 
arena  to  fight  with  beasts,  driven  out  of 
cities,  at  one  time  by  Gentiles,  at  another,  by 
Jews;  and  all  the  while  handicapped  by  a 
physical  infirmity.  Though  giving  most  of 
his  time  to  the  work  of  preaching  and  organ- 
izing churches,  he  did  not  renounce  his  trade. 
On  the  contrary,  he  made  tents  whenever  op- 
portunity offered,,  preferring  to  earn  his  own 
living  rather  than  be  a  burden  on  the  indus- 
try of  others.  He  was  at  Rome  in  the  fateful 
summer  of  64,  when  Nero  accused  the  Chris- 
tians of  burning  the  imperial  city.  Of  the 
terrible  persecution  that  followed  this  accu- 
sation Tacitus  has  told  us.  As  nothing  what- 
ever is  known  of  Paul's  death  it  has  been 
conjectured  that  he  was  one  of  the  victims  of 
that  Neronian  persecution. 

Reverting  to  those  three  years  spent  in  re- 
flection and  adjustment  to  altered  ideas  and 
purpose,  let  us  endeavor  to  see  just  what  this 
conversion  of  Paul  involved.  In  the  first 
place,  it  meant  that  he  had  gained  a  new  view 
of  the  crucifixion.  Prior  to  the  vision  on  the 
road  to  Damascus,  he  had  looked  upon  the 
tragedy  of  the  cross  as  a  just  visitation  of 
268 


FOUNDERS    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

the  wrath  of  God  upon  an  impostor — the 
popular  Jewish  interpretation  of  the  time. 
Now,  however,  he  construes  the  crucifixion 
as  God's  free  gift  of  salvation  to  all  who  be- 
lieve in  the  atoning  efficacy  of  the  blood- 
sacrifice  which  Jesus  offered  on  the  cross. 
Blood-sacrifice  as  an  indispensable  requisite 
for  bringing  oneself  or  others  into  at-one- 
ment  with  God,  estrangement  from  whom  is 
the  curse  of  his  wrath  for  sin  that  has  been 
committed — this  was  the  ancient  long-estab- 
lished Jewish  belief  of  the  relation  of  sacri- 
fice to  atonement.  Expiation  for  every  sin 
must  be  made  somehow  and  by  someone — 
Jesus '  crucifixion  met  this  requirement  of  the 
Law.  Out  of  love  for  man  and  in  obedience 
to  God,  Jesus  suffered  and  died,  thereby  ex- 
piating the  sins  of  all  believers  in  his  sacri- 
fice and  at  the  same  time  satisfying  the  re- 
quirement of  the  Jewish  Law  and  the  de- 
mand of  God.  Henceforth,  this  interpreta- 
tion of  the  crucifixion,  coupled  with  his  be- 
lief in  the  resurrection  of  Jesus  from  the 
dead,  became  the  central  and  all-absorbing 
interest  of  Paul's  life.  Indeed,  it  was  the 
doctrine  that  made  the  break  with  Judaism 
269 


THE    LIFE    OF    JESUS 

complete,  inaugurating  a  new  religion  with 
a  new  name.  Moreover,  this  concentration  of 
interest  upon  the  crucifixion  and  the  resurrec- 
tion explains,  in  large  measure,  Paul's  ap- 
parent indifference  to  the  ethical  teachings 
of  Jesus.  Preoccupied  with  a  new  theory  of 
salvation,  one  that  stood  in  no  immediate  re- 
lation to  the  ethics  of  Jesus,  it  ought  not  to 
surprise  us  that  Paul's  writings  contain 
practically  no  allusion  either  to  incidents  in 
the  life  of  Jesus  or  to  precepts  of  his  vari- 
ous discourses. 

A  second  important  point  involved  in 
Paul's  conversion  is  the  new  view  he  took  of 
the  Jewish  Law.  Never  did  he  doubt  its  Di- 
vine origin  or  its  transmission  to  Israel  by 
the  hand  of  Moses,  or  the  indispensable  part 
it  played  in  the  evolution  of  religion.  But 
in  so  far  as  sacrifices  were  concerned,  Paul 
now  felt  that  the  Law  regarding  them  should 
be  abrogated.  For  a  sacrifice  had  been  made 
which  transcended  all  that  ever  had  been  of- 
fered. What  further  need  of  lambs,  or  oil, 
or  grain,  when  a  supreme  sacrifice,  of  ever- 
lasting efiicacy  in  its  atoning  power,  had 
been  made  upon  the  cross?  To  reconcile  the 
270 


FOUNDERS    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

Divine  origin  and  the  merely  temporary  use- 
fulness of  the  Law,  Paul  appealed  to  the 
pedagogues'  function  in  the  life  of  Jewish 
children.^  Just  as  the  sons  of  wealthy  Jew- 
ish parents  were  under  the  supervision  of  a 
pedagogue  (mistranslated  ''schoolmaster") 
who  served  as  companion  and  tutor  until  they 
were  old  enough  to  go  to  school  and  were 
then  accompanied  by  him  to  school  and 
turned  over  to  the  teacher,  so  the  Law  was 
such  a  pedagogue,  to  bring  us  unto  the 
teacher  Christ ;  and,  once  in  his  presence,  all 
further  need  and  responsibility  of  the  peda- 
gogue was  at  an  end. 

Once  more,  the  apostle's  conversion  in- 
volved a  new  conception  of  religious  fellow- 
ship. As  a  Pharisee  he  had  held  the  tradi- 
tional idea  that  Gentiles  must  become  Jews 
in  order  to  enjoy  the  privileges  vouchsafed 
to  the  chosen  people.  But  now,  as  a  convert, 
this  distinction  between  Jew  and  Gentile  dis- 
appears. ' '  Not  by  the  law, ' '  but  by  ' '  grace ' ' 
are  men  saved.  Such  was  the  new  contention 
of  Paul.  He  had  substituted  for  a  provin- 
cial, exclusive  condition  of  religious  fellow- 
Gal.  3  :  24. 

271 


THE    LIFE    OF    JESUS 

ship  one  that  to  him  seemed  cosmopolitan 
and  all  inclusive.  He  had  made  the  sect  of 
the  Nazarenes  synonymous  with  what  to  him 
was  a  universal  religion.  Circumcision, 
''Kosher,"  and  all  the  other  peculiar  re- 
quirements of  the  Law  were  now  negligible 
elements,  because  in  the  new  religion  there 
is  neither  Jew  nor  Gentile,  neither  bond  nor 
free,  neither  male  nor  female,  for  all  are  one 
in  the  sacrifice  Jesus  made,  his  grace,  in  the 
benefits  of  which  all  souls  may  share. 

And  here  we  are  brought  to  another,  and 
the  most  fundamental,  change  involved  in  the 
conversion  experienced  by  Paul;  one  that 
touched  the  deeps  of  his  moral  nature  and 
solved  the  most  perplexing  of  all  his  prob- 
lems. For  years  he  had  been  conscious  of  a 
moral  and  spiritual  wretchedness,  due  to  the 
discovery  that  he  could  not  fulfil  the  law  of 
righteousness  as  required  by  Judaism.  Now 
that  wretchedness  was  permanently  banished 
by  a  mystical  appropriation  of  the  super- 
abundant righteousness  that  was  in  Christ. 

Turn  to  the  seventh  chapter  of  his  letter 
to  the  Eomans,  where,  from  the  fourteenth 
verse  to  the  close  of  the  chapter,  one  reads 
272 


FOUNDERS    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

the  most  impressive  of  all  self-revelations  in 
the  religious  literature  of  the  world.  That 
passage  is,  in  truth,  the  corner-stone  on 
which  Paul's  plan  of  salvation  was  reared. 
' '  The  good  that  I  would  I  do  not,  and  the  evil 
which  I  would  not,  that  I  do.  I  delight  in 
the  law  of  God,  but  I  find  also  another  law, 
the  law  of  my  members,  warring  against  the 
higher  law  and  bringing  me  into  captivity 
unto  sin.  0  wretched  man  that  I  am,  who 
shall  deliver  me,"  who  shall  free  me  from 
this  slavery  to  sin ;  who  endow  me  with  moral 
power  to  do  the  Divine  Will?  Such  was  the 
confession  and  problem  of  the  apostle.  He 
shared  with  Jesus  the  conviction  that  moral 
progress  is  impossible  until  one  has  acknowl- 
edged the  fact  of  imperfection.  He  would 
have  responded  with  a  quick  amen  to  that 
answer  of  Jesus  to  the  question  of  the  tricky 
lawyer — and  no  more  authentic  saying  of  Je- 
sus has  come  down  to  us  than  that  reply — 
''Good  Master,  what  shall  I  do  to  inherit 
eternal  life?"  Jesus  replied:  ''Why  callest 
thou  me  good,  there  is  none  good  but  One." 

But  now,  whereas  Jesus  was  strengthened 
and  sustained  by  the  conviction  of  limitless 
273 


THE    LIFE    OF    JESUS 

moral  possibilities  residing  in  every  human 
soul,  so  that  he  could  plead,  "Be  ye  perfect" 
in  your  finite  measure  as  the  Infinite  One  is 
perfect,  Paul  was  absolutely  overcome  by  a 
sense  of  moral  incapacity  to  improve.  Man, 
he  maintained,  is  inherently  evil,  having  been 
under  the  sway  of  sin  ever  since  the  time  of 
Adam.  True,  the  Law  has  been  given,  but 
who  is  there  that  can  fulfil  it?  Man  is 
morally  impotent  to  do  what  the  Law  re- 
quires. But  everywhere  in  the  teachings  of 
Jesus  it  is  assumed  that,  despite  his  prone- 
ness  to  sin,  man  has  unexhausted  possibilities 
for  moral  development  as  a  constant  asset  of 
his  spiritual  nature.  If  it  were  not  so,  what 
meaning  would  there  have  been  in  the  cry, 
"Eepent"?  Why  should  he  bid  men  "strive 
to  enter  in,"  or  to  "do  the  will  of  the  heav- 
enly Father,"  if  there  be  no  capacity  for 
moral  progress  in  man? 

But  Paul  utterly  despaired  of  makmg 
moral  progress  save  as  some  power  or  per- 
son could  come  to  his  aid.  "To  will,"  he 
said,  "is  present  with  me,  but  Jiow  to  per- 
form that  which  is  good,  I  find  not."^     Is 

*Eom.   7  :  18. 

274 


FOUNDERS    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

tliere,  then,  anyone  equal  to  the  task  of  lift- 
ing him  "from  his  dead  self  to  higher 
things!"  Obviously  only  one  who  has  suc- 
ceeded where  he  failed,  only  one  who  actu- 
ally fulfilled  the  law  of  righteousness  could 
meet  his  need.  Reflecting  upon  the  person- 
ality of  Jesus,  his  life  and  work,  his  cruci- 
fixion and  resurrection,  there  came  to  Paul 
the  conviction  that  Jesus  alone  of  all  men 
could  help  him.  For  only  he  had  ''fulfilled 
the  law  of  righteousness."  He,  therefore, 
must  have  been  of  supernatural  origin,  dif- 
fering from  all  other  souls  in  kind  as  well  as 
in  degree.  He,  and  only  he,  can  be  in  pos- 
session of  superabundant  righteousness.  If, 
then,  this  could  be  borrowed,  it  would  enable 
the  apostle  to  overcome  his  confessed  ina- 
bility to  do  the  good  he  would.  Such  in  brief, 
bare  outline  was  the  trend  of  Paul's  thought 
on  this  most  vital  of  all  moral  issues.  And 
when  he  faced  the  further  qu£stion,  how  can 
this  righteousness  of  Jesus  he  borrowed,  he 
answered,  mystically,  ' '  By  faith. ' ' 

And  just  here  we  must  beware  of  misun- 
derstanding  him.     Faith,    to   him,   did   not 
mean  any  species  of  intellectual  assent  to,  or 
275 


THE    LIFE    OF    JESUS 

blind  acceptance  of,  a  great  spiritnal  good. 
On  the  contrary,  faith  to  him  had  an  alto- 
gether practical  yet  mystical  meaning.  To 
fix  one's  thought  steadily  and  intensely  on 
the  person  and  character  of  the  God-man 
Jesus  so  that  one  becomes,  as  it  were,  as- 
similated to  him;  ''to  put  on  the  Lord  Jesus 
Christ";  to  envelop  oneself  with  Him,  as 
with  a  cloak;  to  let  Him  so  function  that  all 
one's  thoughts,  words  and  deeds  are  not 
one's  own  but,  in  essence.  His — this  is  what 
Paul  meant  by  faith.  And  so  far  was  he 
from  identifying  faith  solely  with  an  atti- 
tude of  mind  or  with  an  easy  luxuriating  in 
the  thought  of  Christ,  that  he  declared  it 
worthless  except  it  be  related  to  moral  living. 
When,  therefore,  the  Corinthian  libertines, 
after  hearing  Paul's  discourse,  imagined  they 
could  have  faith  and  yet  continue  to  revel  in 
their  immoralities,  he  disposed  of  their  false 
inference  by  assuring  them  that  if  they  had 
faith,  not  even  the  desire  to  do  evil  would  be 
present  with  them.^ 

Thus,    to    the    age-long   question,    ''What 
shall  I  do  to  be  saved  % ' '  Paul  gave  a  new  an- 

*  II  Cor.  13  :  5. 

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FOUNDERS    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

swer.  Confess  your  inability  to  fulfil  the  law 
of  righteousness,  believe  on  the  Lord  Jesus 
Christ,  the  exceptional,  archetypal,  celestial 
man,  the  second  Adam,  the  Son  of  God,  bor- 
row of  his  superabundant  righteousness  by 
practicing  faith,  i.  e.,  by  becoming  assimi- 
lated to  him,  by  reproducing  in  your  own  ex- 
perience his  crucifixion  and  resurrection,  let- 
ting the  death  of  sin  in  you  become,  as  it 
were,  a  repetition  of  his  death  and  your  ris- 
ing into  the  new  life,  a  repetition  of  his  res- 
urrection. 

From  all  that  has  been  said  it  would  seem 
clear  enough  that  Paul  was  the  founder  of 
Christianity,  founding  it  when  he  broke  with 
Judaism.  Yet  there  are  certain  considera- 
tions to  be  reckoned  with  that  compel  our 
looking  to  Jesus  as  having  had  a  part  in  the 
founding  of  the  new  religion.  It  must  be  re- 
membered that  without  the  crucifixion  of 
Jesus  and  belief  in  his  resurrection  there 
could  have  been  no  Christianity.  It  was  in 
the  name  of  Jesus  and  on  faith  in  him  that 
Paul  presented  his  new  plan  of  salvation. 
Moreover,  all  the  while  that  Paul  was  en- 
gaged in  developing  his  theology  and  spread- 
277 


THE    LIFE    OF    JESUS 

ing  his  Gospel,  influences  were  at  work  that 
derive  not  from  him  but  from  Jesus,  demon- 
strating that  any  complete  answer  to  the 
question,  who  founded  Christianity,  must 
take  cognizance  of  these. ^  For  they  were 
present  in  Christianity  at  the  very  start, 
were  acknowledged  by  the  Apostle  Paul,  and 
have  been,  in  some  measure,  realized  in  every 
age  of  Christian  history.  As  evidence  of 
Paul's  appreciation  of  these  influences,  we 
have  only  to  recall  such  phrases  as  these :  '  *  I 
am  not  ashamed  of  the  Gospel  of  Jesus 
Christ."  "Be  like-minded  one  toward  an- 
other, after  the  example  of  Christ."  ''Bear 
ye  one  another's  burdens,  and  so  fulfil  the 
law  of  Christ. "  * '  I  beseech  you  by  the  meek- 
ness and  gentleness  of  Christ."^ 

No  one  can  read  the  Synoptic  Gospels 
without  realizing  that  Jesus'  gospel  of  love 
and  service,  regardless  of  race,  class  or 
creed,  is  the  crowning  contribution  of  his 
message.  We  see  it  illustrated  in  his  par- 
able of  the  good  Samaritan,  designed,  as  it 

*  See  the  illuminating  article  on  this  point  by  Prof.  Mc- 
Liffert   in   the    "Theological   Eeview,"   April,    1910. 
='Kom.    1  :  16;    15  :  5;    Gal.    6:2;    II   Cor.   10  :  1. 

278 


FOUNDERS    OF    CHRISTIANITY 

was,  to  teach  not  merely  the  surface  lesson 
commonly  drawn  from  it,  viz.,  that  everyone 
who  needs  ns  is  our  neighbor,  but  also  the 
deeper  truth  that  the  despised  Samaritan, 
representing  the  very  dregs  of  Jewish  so- 
ciety and  himself  a  religious  outcast,  showed 
himself  neighbor  to  the  wounded  traveler 
and,  in  consequence,  deserved  to  be  regarded 
as  a  neighbor  by  the  aristocratic  priest  and 
Levite  who  stood  two  strata  higher  in  the 
social  scale.  We  see  it  again  in  the  beautiful 
simile  toward  the  close  of  the  Sermon  on  the 
Mount,  in  which  Jesus,  citing  the  beneficence 
of  Heaven,  which  favors  with  sunshine  and 
with  rain  the  fields  of  the  just  and  unjust, 
bids  his  hearers  manifest  a  love  as  boundless 
and  unrestrained. 

That  Gospel  has  ever  been  an  integral  part 
of  the  Christian  religion  and  must  be  reck- 
oned with  in  any  adequate  definition  of  it. 
So,  too,  the  personal  example  of  Jesus,  the 
example  of  sincerity,  sympathy,  and  conse- 
cration, must  take  its  place  among  these  in- 
fluences that  have  ever  been  present  in 
Christianity ;  and  this,  moreover,  is  an  influ- 
ence that  takes  precedence  over  all  others 
279 


THE    LIFE    OF    JESUS 

as  the  most  powerful  of  moral  agents  in  the 
transforming  of  character.  Nor  can  we  pay 
Jesus  any  higher  tribute  than  to  say  that  in 
his  own  progressive  life  he  practiced  the  gos- 
pel he  preached. 

Still  one  other  influence  must  be  included, 
one  that  is  derived  not  from  Paul  but  from 
Jesus,  and  which  in  every  period  of  Chris- 
tian history  has  made  itself  felt.  I  refer  to 
his  filial  affection  and  trustfulness  toward  a 
higher  Power.  True,  the  God-idea  Jesus  en- 
tertained has  undergone  radical  changes,  but 
his  spirit  of  trust  abides  as  a  permanent 
reality  of  the  Christian  consciousness. 

Here,  then,  are  influences  that  were  op- 
erative in  Christianity  throughout  the  period 
of  Paul's  missionary  activity,  yet  all  of  them 
originating,  not  from  him,  but  from  Jesus. 
While,  therefore,  we  give  to  Paul  the  first 
place,  as  the  direct  and  immediate  founder  of 
organized  Christianity,  we  see  that  Jesus, 
too,  had  an  indispensable  part  in  its  forma- 
tion. Without  Jesus  there  could  have  been 
no  Apostle  Paul  and  from  Jesus  influences 
emanated  that  have  ever  been  an  inalienable 
part  of  the  Christian  religion.  ^  ^ 

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